Category: Gardening

February 12, 2014 / Vickie Lester

After we got married, I asked her what she wanted more than anything. We were looking over the property and she said, “I’d like manure for the bottom thirty.” And she meant it too. Gable and Lombard

February 5, 2014 / Vickie Lester

It depends on how you look at it… or was there something odd in my coffee this morning?

I have a startling confession to make — I’ve never read Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls. Movie yes, book no. I did, however, read Every Night, Josephine! It was something about her poodle, meeting Garbo while walking perfectly groomed, restaurant fed, Josephine in Manhattan, and I remember thinking when…

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January 15, 2014 / Vickie Lester

I can get away from this shack with its cheap furniture…

Veda (in Mildred Pierce referring to the town of Glendale): With this money I can get away from you. From you and your chickens and your pies and your kitchens and everything that smells of grease. I can get away from this shack with its cheap furniture. And this town…

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January 3, 2014 / Vickie Lester

ENTERTAINING WITH THE RATHBONES

Ouida and Basil Rathbone (Sherlock before Cumberbatch) entertained lavishly and often – I thought you might like to see their home: – –

January 3, 2014 / Vickie Lester

BASIL RATHBONE, A.K.A. SHERLOCK HOLMES, GARDENING

During WWI Rathbone served as an intelligence officer and excelled at disguise. Maybe that’s what led him toward the stage? He also was into his home and his family (there were two) and his garden… Here he is pruning a tree in Beverly Hills.

December 2, 2013 / Vickie Lester

This week the line-editor and I complete the manuscript

Driving home from Dim Sum Sunday the weekend after Thanksgiving, we came to a road so beautiful, so golden with autumn, that I made The Mister pull over and hopped out of the car to snap this picture. As it is I can barely contain myself, because—drum roll please—this is…

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October 13, 2013 / Vickie Lester

Dim Sum Sunday at the San Gabriel Mission and 1,000 posts

The Mister at the San Gabriel Mission: Visitors to the Mission: From whence the vineyards of California came: As for the 1000th post… It’s just a number, but what it represents is our friendship and dialogue, and for that, treasured readers, thank you.

August 27, 2013 / Vickie Lester

LOS ANGELES IN THE 1920s – WOMAN AND PARROT

What could be better on a sunny day than sitting outside with a friendly parrot? In later years descendants of escaped birds would form huge flocks in the Hollywood Hills and Pasadena. That stand of fronds looks to me like a banana plant. I had one in front of my…

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August 6, 2013 / Vickie Lester

WHAT GROWS IN HOLLYWOOD

July 26, 2013 / Vickie Lester

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO A GRIPPING LIFE

The interwebs, like the world which they mirror, can be a vast daunting place. There are a lot of strange things out there as well as very strange people (of which, I may be one) and it can be quite scary. But then you discover places that are purely wonderful,…

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