Driving south on Rosemead Blvd, looking for the 60 East.
I know the on-ramp is on the left.
Oh, s**t, it’s on the right.
Ok, I can turn around up there.
Oh look, a lake.
And birds.
And I have my camera….
Sister
The other sister.
The protective brother.
The punk brother.
Dad.
Abstract Los Angeles is walking the streets, sometimes when the sun is down, watching.
This fragment is shot on the pedestrian bridge over the 110 near Chinatown.
People, on the streets of Los Angeles, being.
Abstract Los Angeles is finding free time to walk the streets, look around, and see small pieces in a larger puzzle.
Today’s installment is about lines. Order in a concrete jungle.
A moment of a life, while wandering the streets.
The freeways of Los Angeles can be beautiful.
134, Eagle Rock, Moon
5, Griffith Park
110, South Pasadena, Airplane
Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Gardens
“California’s Native Garden”
In Claremont, 35 miles -or so- east of downtown Los Angeles.
This place is one huge garden. Like the one your grandma has out back, but bigger, infinitely bigger.
Give yourself a couple hours -at least- to wander about all the meandering trails.
I really know nothing about plants, other than what I remember from high school, which is well, almost nothing.
But they are pretty.
And different times of the year different plants are pretty for different reasons. I visited in spring, for the wild flowers.
Other than it being beautiful, this garden is special for one particular reason, all the plants are native to California. Or as the sign says:
“The Plants on display are native species or cultivated forms developed from them. A few are ancient components of California flora or close relatives of our native species.”
[Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden Link]
Enjoy the photographs.
Wyethia elata: Hall’s mule ears, Hall’s wyethia
Trachemys scripta elegans: Red-eared Slider
Libellula saturata: Flame Skimmer
This is a pine tree, and the red cones are Male Pine Cones, not sure exactly which species.
Danaus plexippus: Monarch butterfly
Unknown Butterfly [The Queen?]
Dendromecon rigida: also called bush poppy or tree poppy
Fallugia paradoxa: Apache Plume
Romneya coulteri: Coulter’s Matilija Poppy
Eschscholzia californica: California Poppy
Wandering the streets, watching the people.
They went and put the military base in the middle of nowhere, hidden between the low rocky hills and the wide open dry lake beds of the Southern California deserts, probably because they wanted to blow things up in peace and quiet.
I didn’t come to Fort Irwin to visit the military, but to go on the tour of NASA and JPL’s giant space dishes, where they talk to the astronauts and the rovers. [Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex] But just before the military entrance was a pile of rocks, painted, bright and colorful. Which obviously caught my eye.
So on my way out, I had to see what was going on.
During World War II this area (which was previously known as Bitter Springs) became the Mojave Anti-Aircraft Range, and then quickly renamed –for a World War I Major General- Fort Irwin.
The pile of rocks with paint on them, or more accurately speaking, this tor with paint on them, was, back in the 1940’s and 1950’s a meeting place for the soldiers, and natural amphitheatre. It was at this time the rocks got their first coat of paint.
At first it was a haphazard affair, as the base kept closing and opening with the United States need for soldiers. It was in 1972 that the base became permanent, and under the control of the National Guard, and a place where military units passed through to train themselves in the art of war.
As the units passed through, more and more of them painted their colors, their logos, and their slogans onto the rocks.
Eventually they ran out of rocks, and now it is a regulated affair. Rocks have to be found and transported, and the design submitted to a committee.
There is an odd feeling standing in the middle of the open desert, with the enormous blue sky, and crumpled masses of brown rocks in every direction. A vast empty wasteland of blue and brown, with this one splash of color.
The painted rocks almost feel like a memorial, but it’s too happy and entertaining to be that. The soldiers obviously had too much fun making these for it to be a memorial. It feels like a tribute to the enthusiasm before heading out to war, rather than the somber memorials we get after the fact.
[Directions to the Fort Irwin Rocks: Be on the 15 freeway just east of Barstow, exit on Fort Irwin Road, head north. Drive this deserted road into the middle of nowhere, until you see the rocks and the military base entrance.]
Fort Irwin's Painted Rocks: Greywolf
Fort Irwin's Painted Rocks: Peace, 2003.
Fort Irwin's Painted Rocks: First to Baghdad.
Fort Irwin's Painted Rocks: In The Sky
Fort Irwin's Painted Rocks: We Kicked Ass.
Fort Irwin's Painted Rocks: Gong Mu Ro, 14th En Bn Rugged
Fort Irwin's Painted Rocks: Griffins, Point of the Dagger
Fort Irwin's Painted Rocks: 39th
Fort Irwin's Painted Rocks: 1/66 Armored: Iron Knights
Fort Irwin's Painted Rocks:
Wandering the street, watching the people.
Wandering the street, watching the people.
