These are pictures taken during three consecutive hikes in the San Gabriel mountains in the vicinity of Pasadena. The first hike was with our friend Marina. She picked us up at grandma Milica's house on Saturday morning at 6 sharp. It was before daybreak and I felt, as we were driving to Eaton Canyon, still dazed by this early wake-up, as if I was being taken back to the airport...
Marina is an avid hiker. She knows many hiking trails in the area. The landscapes in the San Gabriel mountains remind her of her native Croatia. It was still dark when we arrived at the trail head. Yet, there were other cars already parked there. Other hikers on an early schedule. We then climbed up pretty briskly with Vladimir trailing back a bit. This was a short hike, as we had planned to go to the Pasadena green market on the way back. (That market is well-worth the detour)
The picture of the clearing was taken during the second hike, also in Eaton canyon, where 
we went with Vlada's uncle Peter on Sunday morning. We had planned to walk to a waterfall but a slide had blocked the way so we had to head back before reaching the falls.
The last two pictures were taken on a longer hike that Vlada and I did on Monday morning: Echo Mountain Trail which climbs up Mount Lowe. Marina had recommended this beautiful trail the day before. The trail starts in land which, according to local lore, used to be the Marx brothers estate. The trail then climbs up quite a bit, going through different micro climates. At times, we could have been in the Alps and at other times in Brittany. There was a great variety of plants and wildflowers growing along the trail. Most impressive were the great bushes of wild sage.
As I am sitting on the plane taking me back to New York, with a small fragrant branch of grapefruit tree in the mesh pocket of the seat in front of me, I am remembering what I did during the past five days in Milica’s garden. We arrived at the home of “baba Milica” (“grandma Militsa”) in Monrovia Thursday shortly after noon. Once there, I made a beeline to the backyard which Vladimir had advertised last fall as being a bit of a jungle. He had come back from his November trip to California with alluring tales of citrus trees in bloom in Milica’s backyard which he had said were overgrown and in need of pruning and possibly other care. The idea had then been planted in my mind that I should make sure to accompany him on his next visit to see his grandmother.
Milica had turned eighty-nine the week before our arrival in LA. She has been living in the same house in Monrovia, in the flat lands at the foot of the San Gabriel mountains, for the past twenty two
years. On first impression, the trees and backyard looked disappointingly “groomed.” The lawn had been recently mowed. The grapefruit tree was lush and in full bloom as well as bearing many fruit – the fragrance coming from it heavenly: a very strong and sweet scent similar to jasmine, which attracted throngs of buzzing bees. I picked up a ladder and clipped dead branches and a big dead vine which had once invaded the top and back of the tree.
During the next three days, I would gradually discover a number of gardening tasks, both in the back and front yards. Along the façade of the house, red geraniums had grown to rather incredible size are were 
screaming for an intervention. In their eagerness to grow they had covered all sorts of plants that had once been planted in the same border but in front of them: a two-foot tall jade tree which I dug out and replanted along a neighbor’s fence, various ferns and tropical plants which in less extraordinary climates normally grow indoors, a spiky aloe with many young shoots. I kept being amazed at how easily plants grow in southern California. Up in the mountains surrounding Monrovia, wild sage is everywhere and at this time of year is a beautiful shade of green.
Vlada and I got tomato plants which I put in the backyard along the neighbors’ wall – Milica told us that she used to grow tomatoes back there (she even had pictures of them). She also remembered the kinds of tomato plant she used to buy (“early girl”), so we 
made sure to pick the same kind. Milica had zinnia seeds which I planted in the border along the driveway, where she wanted them. During our stay, I found it hard to resist getting lavender plants during visits to green markets and grocery stores, so I ended up planting five lavender plants (three Spanish, two French) mostly in the front yard where I expect them to thrive. Spanish lavender in Monrovia yards grows into large bushes with myriads of flowers, as does rosemary – something rarely seen on the East Coast.
Rescuing the numerous cacti which had once been put into pots and set in the border in the backyard but had over time fallen over and been almost entirely covered by weeds and ivy was another unplanned project which turned out to be fun despite its spikiness. This occupied a hot and sunny late afternoon while Vlada was doing something or other inside the house. My therapeutic gardening spree lasted until our last day in Monrovia: with only an hour to go before we were due to be driven back to LAX, I made one last dash before breakfast to the nearby nursery, nominally to return the many plastic pots that this nursery recycles, but also to buy creeping rosemary and seeds of nasturtium and hollyhock which I rushed to plant in the front yard border. If all goes according to plan, Milica's garden should look pretty good this summer.
PS: Milica came to the US (from Belgrade, Yugoslavia) in 1957. She has been living in LA since the late 1950’s. She loves to talk, is an excellent cook and an even better baker but unfortunately rarely writes down her recipes. She is a staunch supporter of President Obama whom she voted for in November.
I just came back from the green market at Union Square which was preceded by a short stop at the Muhlenberg branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL), where my partner Vlada had a book on hold (“The Fruit Hunters – A story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession” by Adam Leith Gollner). Where does Vlada come up with these books? Recently, he and I discovered that books (as well as DVDs) could be conveniently reserved and ordered online on the NYPL website and that, even more attractively, recent books ordered in this fashion from the NYPL were almost always in a condition approaching the brand-new.
This recent realization of yet another benefit of living in a large city on the East Coast of the US such as New York, has not prevented V. and I to purchase books, new and used, whenever the opportunity arises. There is hardly a weekend when we do not visit at least one Manhattan bookstore. This winter, we have been accumulating books at a rate which far exceeds our reading speed. This is OK - I truly enjoy having a stack of unread books on our shelves, ready to be picked up as the need arises. I have, by the way, handwritten the draft of this note on a pad propped up on a recent book purchase – a large format book devoted to the art of the sculptor Ivan Mestrovic, recently bought at one of the Housing Works stores.
Our home library, while undoubtedly very modest by the standards of our immediate neighborhood and 
city of residence, still regularly fills me with contentment and pride. I love to have discovered and collected, through chance events big and small, works by authors from the Balkans ranging from the famous to the virtually unknown (in the US). I find inner peace thinking that the memoirs of Simone de Beauvoir, Proust’s "Recherche du temps perdu" and a sizeable quantity of Yukio Mishima’s and Marguerite Yourcenar's fiction sits up there on the circular red bedroom shelf right under the ceiling, ready to be picked-up and re-read at any time. Recently I have started a small but slowly growing collection of travel writing which will keep company to Rebecca West’s “Black lamb and grey falcon.”
In 2009, New York is happily still a fairly bookish town. Besides, despite the omnipresence in Manhattan of the usual big chain bookstores and the convenience of the major online booksellers, small neighborhood bookstores manage to endure, and even perhaps thrive. Among my favorites bookstores in downtown Manhattan, two of them come to mind. The first one, an old favorite, is Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in Soho, which sells used books for 
a good cause. The second one, Idlewild Books, located in Chelsea near Union Square in a newcomer which specializes in travel books and world literature. Idlewild is a small independent bookstore. I happened upon it one recent evening, lured by a large globe prominently displayed in the second floor of the building where the store is located. Stepping into this little gem of a place is perhaps the closest thing to visiting the Paris apartment of imaginary well-to-do friends or relatives while they are away. This bookstore is a cozy beauty where I could picture myself living, where books are neatly organized by country of origin and where a lot of thought went into the selection of both fiction and non-fiction works. If the owners offered coffee - as they currently do not, customers would likely linger there for hours.
PS: The photos on this post are of three of my favorites books by authors from the Balkans: "How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone" (by Sasa Stanisic), "The Beloved Land" (by Vladimir Dedijer) and "La Chronique de Travnik" (by Ivo Andric). I have now read Andric's “La Chronique de Travnik” (“Bosnian Chronicle”) a total of three times – a personal record that I may not break anytime soon. For those of you curious about the beatiful historistic town of Travnik in Central Bosnia, click here (site of the official site of the BH tourist office), or here and here (for a peek at my pictures of Travnik taken in April 2008).
These are pictures taken during three consecutive hikes in the San Gabriel mountains in the vicinity of Pasadena. The first hike was with our friend Marina. She picked us up at grandma Milica's house on Saturday morning at 6 sharp. It was before daybreak and I felt, as we were driving to Eaton Canyon, still dazed by this early wake-up, as if I was being taken back to the airport...
we went with Vlada's uncle Peter on Sunday morning. We had planned to walk to a waterfall but a slide had blocked the way so we had to head back before reaching the falls.
