Today we celebrated our very first California Christmas. Normally we head to D.C. and New York for the holidays, but, between work demands and travel fatigue, we were content to nest on the West Coast. Feeling nostalgic for her family’s Caribbean traditions, C made a brunch...
The 1948 movie The Red Shoes, restored by Scorsese and offered by Criterion Collection, is a marvel in more ways than we can name. Directed by the Archers, it’s a feat of Technicolor, a loose retelling of a Hans Christian Andersen story in which a dancer comes...
Our aluminum tree aside, we're not into the artificial foliage that emerges every holiday season: that cheap silk ivy, that soulless plastic holly...
This year, don’t just give the gardener in your life the same pair of gloves covered in the same frowzy florals. No doubt he or she already has them. And in, um, spades. For your dear design-minded cultivator, it’s time to think outside the box. For...
This year marks our tenth (!!!!!) Christmas season together. All the more reason to go over-the-top with our yuletide decor. Before we were even finished eating RB’s pancetta-sage stuffing or C’s pomegranate couscous left over from Thanksgiving, we set out to deck the halls of our...
Strelitzia reginae AKA: Bird of paradise Appearance: Tampa Bay origami, hummingbird methadone Origin: A fever dream rising from the ashes of an Anaheim Ramada Occupation: Trailer park socialite, patron saint of screenplays Scent: Top notes of traffic median with a hard candy drydown Zones: Responsible for every bad date in Melbourne Applications: Facilitator of shoulder-pad...
Every weekend last summer, as we walked to and from the beach, we'd pass a south-facing succulent tour de force. But this hedge of Aloe arborescens (street name: torch aloe) didn't really get interesting until November. Welcome mats, schmelcome mats — by now you know that it's the welcome plants that...
At a Halloween party a couple weeks ago, the host, our friend Tom (winningly dressed as a 1930s lion tamer) told us we had to, had to, take a one-block detour to see one of the most spectacular ficus trees we would ever lay eyes on. We...
One of the things RB and C have in common is that we're late bloomers. We won't get into all the clammy high-school specifics, but it's something that we bond on. So — it's no surprise that late autumn flowers endear themselves to us. The cigar...
When our guava harvest is complete and the gin is infused, this is our drink of choice. Fleur de sel caramel sauce is a must, like the one we found from Praline's Patisserie at the La Jolla Open Aire Market. We found ourselves using the guava slice to...