John Wise

The motel we love to hate and hate to love: California Inn in Ontario. First and foremost, it is cheap. Second, it is close to where my father lives. Third, it seems the TV is nearly always tuned to their free porno channel when we turn it on. Other than the sketchy people who stay here (except us, of course) and the yelling, random beating on the door looking for someone we are not, the questionable cleanliness, and the dated rooms, we actually kind of really like this motel.

This is the kind of vehicle Caroline is highly qualified to drive; it is exactly her speed. We came back to the San Gabriel Nursery this morning to pick up some plants we were looking at yesterday, seeing we’ll be driving back to Arizona this afternoon and don’t need to worry about them getting too hot in the car. Caroline packed up Salvia Divinorum, aromatic Cleveland sage (Salvia sp.), red tea hibiscus, chocolate mint, a tiny lavender, a plumeria cutting, and sweet woodruff.

The next stop is the Huntington Library, Art Collection, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. This used to be a private residence in the early 1900s but is now home to 150 acres of various themed gardens and several art galleries.

Italian 17th-century statuary chilling in the California Sun.

The Japanese Gardens also feature a Tea Room that was originally the gardener’s quarters in a small part of a garden house built for Mrs. Huntington. More than a few of the bonsai trees are priceless in their perfection and age, and due to that value, they are chained down to discourage theft.

Like the statuary above, this giant red specimen of Dragonfly remained motionless as I was afforded the opportunity for a close approach to snap my photo.

While we spent a few hours in the garden we weren’t able to visit the museum and library on this day, so we have to make a note to return. The other thing we should pay attention to is the progress of their Chinese Garden, which is intended to be the largest outside of China.

Maybe we got a little too much sun?

After leaving the garden, we headed east, stopping for lunch at Mix Bowl Cafe. Today, we discovered the pleasures of Thai pearl iced tea, also known as boba tea, and fried morning glory in oyster sauce. The pearls in the tea are made of tapioca and have practically no flavor but are fun to slurp out of the cup with the help of the extra-wide straw. Add to our lunch some steamed Koo chai dumplings and an order of pad kee mow (spicy rice noodles with mint leaves and deep-fried tofu), and we were ready to go visit my father around the corner.

Unfortunately, we missed Diana, but chatted with my dad for a couple of hours before hitting the long road home shortly before 5:00 p.m. We managed to stop only once in California – at the Starbucks in Banning – reaching the Arizona state line before Sunset.

We left Ontario early for a visit to the San Gabriel Nursery and Florist to “waste” some time before our first real destination opened. The theme this weekend is “Gardens in the City.” While at the Nursery, we browsed and enjoyed the fruit tree and bonsai sections, as well as the roses and herbs. There’s a small greenhouse area with house plants (such as the money tree) and a beautiful flower shop for floral arrangements. Of course, they have tons of greenhouses on the premises, but they are not open for customers to saunter into.

Descanso Gardens in La Cañada Flintridge is one of two main to-do’s we have planned for today. The neighborhood alone is worth a visit, with huge mansions and beautiful gardens. We spent about 3 hours here and can easily recommend the Camellia Forest as it’s awesome.

With the L.A. basin being a zoo of pavement and cars it’s easy to not recognize the lush landscape that thrives in some of this city’s neighborhoods. While Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset Drive, along with Disneyland and the southern California beaches, draw the majority of visitors’ attention, one should, if time allows, either drive through some of the older neighborhoods or carve out time to visit a place like Descanso or the Huntington (we are heading over there tomorrow).

The Hairy Alien Tongue plant is poisonous if it licks you; fortunately, they are behind a glass enclosure, so we were never in danger. By the way, I’m kidding. We walked the paths through shady groves of blossoming trees, being careful not to disturb the many spiders who spun their beautiful webs from plant to plant, sometimes even across the path. In the sunny spots, lizards tried to keep cool by doing push-ups, or maybe they were warming up; who knows? There is also a small Japanese area with a tea house, pond, and a Zen garden.

The Boddy House Gallery, which is a former residence turned art gallery, was open, and we took a look inside at exhibits of two painters and a pottery artist. Caroline particularly liked the pottery, but the paintings of Fealing Lin were the most beautiful in her eyes. Another favorite was two large watercolor paintings of colorful flowers. We met the artist and took the opportunity to compliment her on her work.

Next, we took a nature trail through Chaparral, which just means all kinds of native riparian plants – in other words, an area that has not been “domesticated” but rather left alone, except for the trail and plant name signs. We found several aromatic sage plants there, but since there was no tree cover, we started overheating and were glad to get back to the more shady areas. Then we meandered a bit through more native plants like poppies that grow taller than 7 feet and some very impressive cacti. As we were passing a pond, we noticed a tiny train track crossing the path, and soon afterward, a miniature train chugged past. A glance at the map confirmed that our round trip through the Gardens was almost finished. We lingered for a short time in the International Rosarium, which features rose hybrids sorted by their countries of creation. We had no idea that Germany and Denmark have contributed such impressive varieties to the world of roses. The aromas are truly intoxicating.

These things, too, are becoming a rarity. The once ubiquitous payphone and phone books are quickly disappearing; it’s only a matter of time before cell phones replace them all.

Making a visual note to remind us to visit the Warhol exhibit. It always feels like there’s something to do in L.A. and yet another thing we’ll regret not having done before we go back home. We are on Melrose Avenue for some lunch at an Indian joint before going to the movies.

Kind of a strange juxtaposition as this icon of wholesomeness, John Wayne, stands vigil in front of the Larry Flynt offices. We are here for the complimentary parking courtesy of Hustler.

This is another big reason we are here in L.A. this weekend, the film “Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner” just opened. This movie made by the Canadian Inuit about the Inuit is being screened at the historic Cecchi Gori Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills. The film is nothing short of brilliant, visually and story-wise. It does what a movie should do; it takes us somewhere else and leaves us having experienced something outside our daily lives. It was a big wow! At about 3 hours long you should have no worries because at no moment was this film ever boring.

After dinner at Zakuro for Shabu Shabu and Sukiyaki with our friend Mark Shimer, we took a stroll around Little Tokyo. This little shop called Daikokuya Ramen looks interesting, something for a future visit.

The dessert was Imagawayaki from Mitsuru Cafe, also in Little Tokyo. What is Imagawayaki, you might ask? They are a kind of pancake filled with sweet azuki bean paste that was first made at the Kanda Imagawabashi bridge back in 1772 and was named after the river Imagawa. This place in downtown L.A. was the first in America to make this traditional Japanese treat.

A trip into Little Tokyo would not be complete without a stop at Kinokuniya. Just try to find a better Japanese bookstore in all of southern California.

It’s 12:30 a.m. when we get on the 101 freeway and find ourselves stuck in a traffic jam moving at a mere 30 mph – that’s Los Angeles. Well before this, though, we had browsed the old and new music, including a healthy selection of vinyl at Amoeba Music, which just opened late last year; this place is enormous. Across the street, we dipped into the Arclight Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard to see The Salton Sea with Val Kilmer. Because we were recently at the Salton Sea and we’ve liked Val Kilmer in some of his previous movies, we thought this might be kind of interesting, but we were wrong. I suppose almost anything we would have seen after The Fast Runner would have paled in comparison.