Poor Little Belotti

My poor little belotti has just bloomed for the first time this year. I’m actually surprised it’s blooming at all. My sister was only able to come water the plants one time in the whole two weeks we were gone. Everything was so dried out that the leaves started falling off. The belotti is down to only a handful of leaves now. Hopefully, it gets a bit better. I love the way it smells. It’s such a light scent you’re almost not sure that it’s there at all.

 

Mountain Findings

My boyfriend and I went on a hike today in the mountains above Alta Dena. I’d never been hiking there before and it was a decent consolation for not being able to go camping this weekend. (well, not exactly.) Anyway, the trail was LOADED with moss. All different kinds and many of the very beautiful fuzzy suede-looking ones. As I have mentioned before, I’m very fascinated with moss.

This is my collection today and I would’ve taken more but I didn’t have a bag or anything so I had to carry everything in one hand. Not a bad harvest considering my limitations.

On the side of the mountain there were all these succulents growing between the crevices. They were also surrounded by little mounds of moss, so I harvested one of those too. How very cute isn’t it?

I’m actually not exactly sure whether I am allowed to be harvesting this stuff.

The orange ball is this seaweed-feeling plant. It feels plastic-y but it’s this beautiful bright orange and when you see it from the freeway, you can’t even tell it’s there because it looks like part of its host plant that’s just dried out. It’s this spidery web stuff and my boyfriend said it spreads very quickly and takes over bushes and plants. It twirls itself around the host plant and finally asphyxiates it and covers it completely from sunlight. There were a lot of dead bushes that looked as though they had been killed by the orange stuff. It actually looks like orange cobwebs all over the plants. Some of the plants were covered very thickly. So anyway, I don’t know what it is and I really hope it’s not poisonous because I took soooo much of it because I thought it was pretty. It’s a brilliant orange and it just looks so lovely with the moss. Does anyone know what it is? I tried google-ing it but I don’t even know how to search for it.

On a completely separate subject… I bought some Mokeskin Cahier Notebooks today for my trip to the UK next month. I decided to cover them of course. When I told my friend what I was doing, he said, “anything to make it a little prettier, right?”.

All three are done in Japanese washi paper. The one on the right I hand-carried back from Japan and the other two I bought here in LA.

I used Yes! glue to put them on and was my first time using Yes glue and I must say it is everything people have raved about. It’s easy to apply. It’s thick enough that it doesn’t run but not too thick where it rips the paper. It’s super simple to put on with a paintbrush. It is also water soluble so if you make a mess it’s an easy cleanup and if you misplace something, you can replace it before it dries. Lastly, it doesn’t wrinkle, is acid-free, and has good bonding once it’s dried.

 

First Passie of the Year

I’m so happy! My vine has not flowered for me for over a year. It was flowering when I bought it and after the initial batch of flowers, went into hibernation and did not flower again. A few weeks ago, it started budding all over the place and I’ve been watching this one bud for almost three weeks and it just popped open! Oh, happy day!

Here’s a much better picture of the vine taken by my boyfriend last year.