Strange Magic Two

Today I will present my second episode of

Strange Magic

Misses & Hits of the 1970s

We will begin the festivites around 4:15 pm at littleradio.com

You can listen through iTunes.

This show is dedicated to the 1970s, a decade of fanciful, cinematic, dreamy and aspirational pop music. Yay! We will, we will rock you.

Last week's show list was as follows. As always, we sprinkled an ultrafine mist of sounds from other eras. (Clear throat):

1. The Wackers, "Hot Wacks"

2. The Wackers, "We Can Be"

3. The Real Kids, "My Baby's Book"

4. Ted Mulry Gang, "My Little Girl"

5. Nina Simone, "My Baby Just Cares For Me" (1959)

6. Curtis Mayfield, "Blue Monday People"

7. Journey, "Stone In Love"

8. Bay City Rollers, "Shang-A-Lang"

9. Nick Lowe, "Rollers Show"

10. Ted Mulry Gang, "Dark Town Strutters' Ball"

11. Fats Waller, "Dark Town Strutters' Ball," composed by Shelton Brooks 1917

12. Elvis Presley, "Burning Love"

13. Journey, "Don't Stop Believing"

14. The Toms, "Long Line of Collectors"

15. Olivia Newton-John, "If Not For You"

16. Electric Light Orchestra, "Sweet Is the Night"

17. Isley Brothers, "Hello It's Me"

18. Todd Rundgren, "Couldn't I Just Tell You"

19. 38 Special, "Hold On Loosely"

20. Badfinger, "Beautiful & Blue"

21. Dobie Gray, "Drift Away"

22. Poco, "Raindrops"

23. Shakone, "Love Machine"

24. Status Quo, "The Price of Love"

25. Fanny, "I Need You Need Me"

26. Stevie Wonder, "You and I"

27. Disney Pinnoccio soundtrack, "When You Wish Upon A Star," 1940

xoxo

kate

Boogie-woogie yay!

"I can see your house from here."

It's finally summertime. School's out for summer!

That means time for my rock & roll radio show!

Strange Magic.

(The show formerly known as Rock & Roll Love Letter.)

I am SO excited about the show I've got planned for tomorrow, Thursday June 19.

4 pm West Coast Time.

Go to Littleradio

Then go to "Tune In."

It's a really neat station.

And tomorrow, I am going to play music to make YOU happy.

Gardening wise, I am waiting waiting waiting for my tomatoes and strawberries, and the suspense is killing me. 

This Is Why

I Love E.L.O.

The Electric Light Orchestra.

E.L.O. is music that brings an eager message to the world, a message of some urgency but great delicacy:

Life is special.

This is why I Love E.L.O.

But E.L.O. gives even more: Their music also says, Music is Special.

Music is An Event.

And isn't it exciting?

You might say that E.L.O. is music about music.

Music about the Beatles. Music about Beethoven and Roy Orbison.

In this way, E.L.O. is very Disney. Because so often, the Disney ethos is art about art. Fantasy about fantasy. Experience about experience. Take Angels Stadium in Anaheim, designed under Disney: a baseball stadium about baseball. Or Disney Hall: a concert hall about concert halls.

I like that, though.

And no, I'm not smoking pot.

To bring this all back to the subject at hand, I would now like to posit that the Passion Flower, Passiflora edulis, is the most Disney of flowers. Or, put another way, it is the E.L.O. of flowers.

Passiflora edulis is the one flower that, more than all flowers, says, Aren't flowers cool?

Passiflora edulis is a flower about flowers.

There's really no other explanation.

MORE GOOD NEWS:

"...Women who ate five or more servings of chocolate each week in their third trimester of pregnancy were 40 percent less likely to develop preeclampsia than those who ate chocolate less than once a week."

If I could grow my own chocolate in the garden, you know I'd be all over that action. 

Instead, I am going to grow something called Chocolate Morning Glory . I am going to grow it on my arbor, which is currently naked. This is what the Chocolate Morning Glory is supposed to look like. 

"Is there something yummy going on? It must be me."

Some people hate Morning Glories because they can be a bit invasive. I love them, because my mother always grew them in our backyard on Third Avenue in Koreatown. I also love them because they grow quickly to create a near-instant screen of loveliness, and they always reach for the sun. Aw. Morning Glory blossoms only live for a day, but they put on quite a show. Many times, the sight of a brand-new, just-opened Morning Glory in my garden has yanked me out of the dark blues and into the bright sunlight. 

Morning Glories have an important lesson to teach. And like the best teachers, they teach by example.

So, my big Artistic Plan is to grow them on the arbor with something called 'Ruby Moon' Hyacinth Bean, which apparently makes purple bean pods and lavender-ish flowers that look like sweet peas. 

"We represent the purple pod guild."

Brown, purple and lavender: a color combo made in flower-chocolate heaven.

"He's the bean pod, I'm the flower."

 

Over the weekend, I played the vintage 1970s Family Feud board game with some friends, which I can't recommend enough.

 

It's truly a great game. But one of the questions was a bit fucked-up for me. 

"Name five fruits or vegetables that grow on a stalk." 

Feeling horticulturally savvy, I blurted out "Brussels Sprouts!" 

Oops.

You see, the key to this game is not being correct, but being able to think like someone in the 1970s. Maybe someone who's not necessarily the smartest blouse on the rack.

Apparently people in the 1970s didn't know very much about plants, because the answers were all things like beans, which obviously grow on vines, and celery, which is a stalk, but doesn't grow on a stalk. 

My answer was a big zero. I felt like such a mom. I mean, a Family Feud Mom. You know what I mean.

xo

Kate

PS: Go eat some chocolate.

Happy Urf Day!

Hi, Wiggle Worms:

Happy Earth Day! Today is my personal best Earth Day ever, and it's also my earthiest, because today I got a "crapload" of badass compost from Mr. Tim Dundon of Altadena, for a song. Marta Teegan of Homegrown put me in touch with him. 

Mr. Tim Dundon has a miniature jungle full of exotic fowl, including a Polish rooster named Rod Stewart, for obvious reasons. Rod Stewart was a little camera-shy, but here is a photo that looks like him.

"Yes, I really am this cool."

My favorite was the crested duck, though. Here is what it looks like as a baby. Can you say OMG CUTE?

"Oh my! I think I'll take a walk."

Mr. Tim Dundon also has a huge compost pile made of fresh wood shavings scraped from the floor of a high-end horse stable. His compost is THE SHIT, if you know what I mean. I will provide his phone number if you leave a comment. He doesn't like to be paid for his compost, but I gave him as much money as he would take. He really just wanted me to spread the word about the magic of gardening. He was full of poetic turns of phrase, such as "The garden is the altar on which we worship God" and things of this nature. 

Mr. Tim Dundon takes a dim view of organized religion, Catholicism in particular. He said that instead of a Popemobile, he drives a big old truck called a Poopmobile.

He also takes a dim view of capitalism. He likes to practice what he calls Crapitalism.

Things of this nature.

I am going out side to pour this happy horsheshit into my raised beds, and sink a bunch of tomatoes, cukes, zukes, bell peppers, strawberries et al.

From the bottom of my soil, Happy Earth Day to you and yours.

Kate

Spring at Sunset Nursery

Hi, Strawberry!

I went to Sunset Nursery today and spent about an hour and a half choosing seeds and plants for my spring/summer veggie/fruit/flower fiesta. One time I saw Bianca Jagger at Sunset Nursery. This time I didn't see anyone from Studio 54. However, I noted that the variety of Blue Fescue I want to plant (Festuca ovina glauca) is called "Elijah Blue," which I can only assume is a tribute to Cher's son with Gregg Allman.

Elijah Blue

Elijah Blue

I'm super-psyched about everything I bought, especially the soy bean (edamame) plant. Edamame is such a treat and so expensive at the store.  Also super-psyched on three new strawberry plants that promise to bear fruit all summer. My strawberry experiment has been a rousing success so far, aside from the Aggravated Assault Incident, and I am now eager to live a full-blown Strawberry Lifestyle. I feel it is my destiny.

Ever so much more soon,

Kate

Happy Friday!

Sorry for not writing this week. I have a lot of garden news to share, mainly concerning the very fun activity of Planning My Summer Edible Garden Wonderland.

I attended a workshop at Homegrown on how to plan a series of raised beds for flowers and edibles. The main exciting thing was learning that I can use straight compost instead of soil, and skip buying soil by the bag at Home Depot for four thousand dollars. Marta, the woman who runs Homegrown, gave us a source for some truly badass compost you buy by the trash bag.

Marta also said it's perfectly fine, and even preferable, to hand-water rather than install a drip system. This was also a huge relief, as I love hand-watering and am not keen on spending a whole weekend attaching tiny tubes to tiny clips and whatnot.

What was a little troubling was that apparently the soaker hoses I've been using--those black ones made out of old tires--are not food safe. Oops!

Most of all, I loved spending time with some other garden geeks in a beautiful backyard in Mount Washington, one of L.A.'s more magical neighborhoods. 

xo

Kate