I love the desert. I’m sort of from the desert. And even though I hate the sun and I hate heat, there are plenty of other things I love about that environment. The dry air, for one. Creosote for another. People erroneously refer to Los Angeles as being in a desert, which is in fact not true—we have a Mediterranean climate which, while mostly arid, gets too much rain to be an actual desert (I mean—just look at these grassy/weed choked hills!)
When I don’t feel like going home, but want to go to the desert, the Huntington Library & Gardens is always just a short train ride away in San Marino. Their desert garden is, rightly, highly regarded and world-famous (apparently—what would I know about that?). Now is a great time to go, as many of the succulents are blooming. They have several of the largest known specimens of various plants, including dioscorea elephantipes and yucca filifera, both quite impressive.
Of course, it’s preferable to just head out into the desert with friends, and it’s nice to live so close to the Mojave, and to Joshua Tree park. I went and spent a wonderful weekend with a group of friends recently. It was the perfect time to go because it was cold and in the middle of a series of storms, so everything was freshly watered and looking lovely yet desolate and, most happily, it smelled of lovely creosote. While climbing Ryan Mountain in the park, it actually started snowing, which was a really magical moment.
Perhaps feeling inspired by our trip to the desert, some of my friends decided they wanted to bring a little bit of the desert into their homes—perhaps they need to up their DOR (‘deadly orgone radiation’ for anyone not familiar with the work of Wilhelm Reich—another desert dweller [at least temporarily]) fix. So we took another field trip out to the California Cactus Center, which was crammed full not just of a huge variety of cacti, but all kinds of succulents. Some of their prices were even fairly reasonable—some!