Part 1, the Gardens
At a quarter to ten in the morning, the day is already warm. The sun-heated air has a bite to it that foreshadows later temperatures in the high 80's (F). My lunch at the tea room isn't until 11:30; in the meantime, Evie is at her conference and though the grounds do not open until 10:30, I have been given permission by Mary at the entrance desk to stroll around the gardens. Mary is young, elegant, and genuinely warm toward us. She wears a string of pearls at her neck and a black dress that is formal without being eveningwear. She indicates the green "visitor" sticker badge that she has given me, the one that permits entrance into the library and the galleries as well as the gardens, and tells me that it is worth its weight in gold.
I lied about having come here, once, on my eighteenth birthday when I was actually at the beach with male company (x2), but I have never been to Huntington Library and its gardens. Once a private residence, it is now something like a museum. The galleries house Pinky and Blue Boy, those famous paintings of children, as well as Shakespeare folios, a printing of the Gutenberg bible, on vellum and illuminated, a centuries old Canterbury Tales, and one of the last remaining Birds of America by Audobon in the elephant folio printing, a three or four foot giant book where the birds are depicted life sized. The library is reserved for scholars and academics and has a high security reading room. Pens are forbidden; only pencils are allowed anywhere in the library proper. The gardens are a catalog of climates from jungle to desert.
I can hardly imagine that this was someone's home. It is immense. In looking for a bench and a bit of shade, I've wandered through the desert garden, which is a little scary. One of the variety of aloes here is tree sized with trunks that would be too large to get my arms around. In this primal landscape, signs warn of highly poisonous fruit that does not look at all inviting to eat. The delicious floral scent in the air comes from a plumeria tree heavy with waxy, creamy colored blossoms. Overhead, hidden birds call to each other in a mad chittering. I don't know their call, or maybe I don't remember it. The disembodied scolding sounds almost raise the hairs on my neck. I see one of the birds at last, furitively hopping about in the coverage of a bushy succulent (another aloe, aloe arborensens, a S. African variety) and he is unfamiliar to me but quite pretty: a cocoa colored body, black hooded head, and black wings with bold white stripes that follow the direction of his feathers. A large scrub oak offers me a comfortable shade, but this part of the grounds is making me foolishly nervous. I think that I need to move on. This morning's coffee is urging me to discover if the lavs marked on the map truly exist further along this path.
I've just noticed a feather that has drifted down while I've been sitting. It's brown with black barring. Feeling as if I'm doing something that is against the rules, I take it.
I had forgotten about lizards. It's been such a long time since I've seen any. Small ones, most no loner than my thumb, run across my shadow. A scrub jay flies across my path. I smile when I see its crest-less round head and the faded blue color of its plumage. Something is making a twittering like nervous laughter in the jojoba, sounding like a grouse or a pheasant, and I try to catch of glimpse of it in the shadowing leaves but it is shy. I haven't brought sunscreen and that strikes me now as very poor planning.
It seems not long after that I have to hurriedly find my way back to the front entrance to meet up with my friend for lunch. My stroll takes me past tall stands of bamboo, some of them wrapped in the twistings of morning glory with blue flowers a tone slightly darker than the jay's feathers. I see the lily pond at a distance, the giant leaves of the water lilies out of scale with the man and child standing at the pond's bank. I watch a squirrel burying some treasure by a eucalyptus tree until he catches me watching and becomes suspicious. Paths sweetened with the perfume of honeysuckle (turraea obtusifolica) lead me past a jade green pond where a brilliantly orange dragonfly is basking. I become a little lost, but just as I am about to sit down under a bay chestnut tree and take out the map again, I see Evie and we wave to each other. We meet on the paving and continue through the rose garden toward the tea house and our lunch.
I lied about having come here, once, on my eighteenth birthday when I was actually at the beach with male company (x2), but I have never been to Huntington Library and its gardens. Once a private residence, it is now something like a museum. The galleries house Pinky and Blue Boy, those famous paintings of children, as well as Shakespeare folios, a printing of the Gutenberg bible, on vellum and illuminated, a centuries old Canterbury Tales, and one of the last remaining Birds of America by Audobon in the elephant folio printing, a three or four foot giant book where the birds are depicted life sized. The library is reserved for scholars and academics and has a high security reading room. Pens are forbidden; only pencils are allowed anywhere in the library proper. The gardens are a catalog of climates from jungle to desert.
I can hardly imagine that this was someone's home. It is immense. In looking for a bench and a bit of shade, I've wandered through the desert garden, which is a little scary. One of the variety of aloes here is tree sized with trunks that would be too large to get my arms around. In this primal landscape, signs warn of highly poisonous fruit that does not look at all inviting to eat. The delicious floral scent in the air comes from a plumeria tree heavy with waxy, creamy colored blossoms. Overhead, hidden birds call to each other in a mad chittering. I don't know their call, or maybe I don't remember it. The disembodied scolding sounds almost raise the hairs on my neck. I see one of the birds at last, furitively hopping about in the coverage of a bushy succulent (another aloe, aloe arborensens, a S. African variety) and he is unfamiliar to me but quite pretty: a cocoa colored body, black hooded head, and black wings with bold white stripes that follow the direction of his feathers. A large scrub oak offers me a comfortable shade, but this part of the grounds is making me foolishly nervous. I think that I need to move on. This morning's coffee is urging me to discover if the lavs marked on the map truly exist further along this path.
I've just noticed a feather that has drifted down while I've been sitting. It's brown with black barring. Feeling as if I'm doing something that is against the rules, I take it.
I had forgotten about lizards. It's been such a long time since I've seen any. Small ones, most no loner than my thumb, run across my shadow. A scrub jay flies across my path. I smile when I see its crest-less round head and the faded blue color of its plumage. Something is making a twittering like nervous laughter in the jojoba, sounding like a grouse or a pheasant, and I try to catch of glimpse of it in the shadowing leaves but it is shy. I haven't brought sunscreen and that strikes me now as very poor planning.
It seems not long after that I have to hurriedly find my way back to the front entrance to meet up with my friend for lunch. My stroll takes me past tall stands of bamboo, some of them wrapped in the twistings of morning glory with blue flowers a tone slightly darker than the jay's feathers. I see the lily pond at a distance, the giant leaves of the water lilies out of scale with the man and child standing at the pond's bank. I watch a squirrel burying some treasure by a eucalyptus tree until he catches me watching and becomes suspicious. Paths sweetened with the perfume of honeysuckle (turraea obtusifolica) lead me past a jade green pond where a brilliantly orange dragonfly is basking. I become a little lost, but just as I am about to sit down under a bay chestnut tree and take out the map again, I see Evie and we wave to each other. We meet on the paving and continue through the rose garden toward the tea house and our lunch.