Working from home has many, many benefits, one of which being the fact that when you’re hungry, there’s no quandry over going out or ordering in—you simply march downstairs and make the best of the refrigerator situation. Sometimes the situation requires drastic, non-glamorous alternatives (a big bowl of stove-popped popcorn is my standby) but sometimes the fridge opens lush and overflowing like an Energy Star-rated cornucopia.

Like today, when it yielded this salad of peaches, figs, corn, carrots, green beans, arugula, cucumber, parmesan and proscuitto. I would say chop and top with your favorite dressing, but I think the secret is not to. I hardly ever put dressing on my salads anymore since the Arbequina olive oil from the Cheese Store of Silver Lake handles the job so delicately all by itself.

One day this mystery squash vine appeared in the garden, most likely as a compost heap survivor. Excited as I was about the possibility of pumpkins, I was more excited about the meals we’d be enjoying long before Halloween. Squash blossoms are a true delicacy in the sense that they require a certain level of sacrifice: For every blossom you eat, that’s one less squash you’ll be enjoying come harvest. But I assure you, they’re worth it.

I often use this tempura recipe from Wolfgang Puck which is especially light and fluffy because it uses soda water in the batter. Instead of goat cheese, we stuffed them with a mixture of farmers market feta and Laughing Cow. They were crispy and sweet and spicy and the very first thing I thought when I dropped the golden blossom into my mouth was, “Wouldn’t this be great with goat cheese ice cream?” Next time.

I’m still buzzing from the amazing response to last weekend’s City Listening II (and the success of the Dwell on Design conference, and the fun of emceeing the LABC’s Los Angeles Architectural Awards…I’m telling you, it was quite a week!). We’ll have a full recap of the evening, including photos, very soon, until then, you can read this review by Mike Neal at Architizer.

But before all that, I just wanted to show you this beautiful photo by Monica Orozco, which was taken at the very end of the night, and take a quick moment to thank my two lovely co-hosts—or as you can see from this photo, maybe three lovely co-hosts—Marissa Gluck and Haily Zaki. These ladies are two of the smartest, hardest-working, most creative forces of nature in this city. Over the last two years they have organized and strategized and materialized dozens of events with huge smiles on their faces and strong cocktails in their hands (except, you know, when Haily got knocked up). And in the process, they’ve also become two of my dearest friends. I can’t wait to see what the future will bring! And on that note, here’s what I read at the event to open it up:  Our de LaB manifesto, in rhyme, of course.

The de LaB Manifesto

We were tired of PowerPoints and panels and pretense
Sick of working the room at lame-ass design events
Tired of the stodginess that came with such happenings
We wanted to know what our neighbors were making

La Brea was picked as an arbitrary line,
But we knew wherever we drew it someone would mind
We welcome the Westsiders, they’re not ostracized
As long as they don’t lie about not crossing the 405

What began as a drinking club quickly turned civic
Our visions for the city became more optimistic
Don’t get me wrong, we still like the drinking
Alcohol is liquid innovation to fuel design thinking

de Lab gets people out of cars and into their city
Introduces neighbors and promotes collaborativity
I know that’s not a word, I invented it myself
de LaB is DIY: We do it ourselves

For design in LA we will walk and ride bikes
We take buses and trains and take LA River hikes
We’re a committed gang of creators who can make a difference
We’re raising a new generation of Los Angeles urbanists

Your support has been amazing for the events we’ve had before
There’s a whole LA out there we haven’t begun to explore
All we need is your support…
…actually, no, we really need your money

By drawing a line through the city, divided
We ended up making it feel more united
We love LA so much it makes us feel giddy
Now sit back, have a drink (that part is important!) and listen to your city

Thanks to everyone for coming and for supporting de LaB!

Update: In all the fabulosity of Saturday night, I screwed up and neglected to post the winning raffle tickets for our eight door prizes. If you were at City Listening and had a raffle ticket, check here to see if you won and email us if you did!

It’s going to be a big, fat, designy weekend here in LA and I hope that you can join me for as much of it as you can muster! First up, Friday, Saturday and Sunday is Dwell on Design, the West Coast’s largest design show and one of my favorite conferences of all time.

For the last few weeks I’ve been writing over at Dwell about all the highlights, including a beautiful tile collaboration between Heath Ceramics and Dwell, a free design clinic hosted by my friends at Architizer, Project H’s GreenAid seed bomb vending machines, David Thompson’s lovely Larchmont Village house, the announcement of a new Cleantech Corridor competition for LA, and an exciting collaboration between Dwell and Arkitip on 10 prints of 10 Dwell houses by 10 artists, including this piece by Andrew Holder (who I was thrilled to interview!). Plus, I got to go to Ed Begley, Jr.’s supergreen house—he’s talking Sunday—and we chatted about riding the bus. He does it!

If all that wasn’t a reason to come out, I’ll be speaking there, too, and I hope you can come by and say hi! Saturday at 12:30pm on the Sustainability stage I’m moderating a panel called Improvising and Improving LA Transit, showcasing how three Angelenos have taken a DIY approach to making the city’s transportation better. On my panel are three of my transit heroes: Dan Koeppel, founder of the 35-mile stairwalk named THE BIG PARADE, which I just wrote about here; Richard Ankrom, the artist who took it upon himself to improve an Los Angeles freeway sign (which I wrote about over at GOOD); and Joseph Prichard, a graphic designer who is improving bike signage, and whose Better Bikeways series I edit at GOOD.

And then at 5pm, same day, same stage, I’m moderating another panel, Watts House Project: Architecture, Art, and Sustainability, about one of the most exciting public art projects in the country, the Watts House Project, featuring Edgar Arceneaux, John Umbanhowar and Frank Escher.

And because I love you so much for reading this blog, I’d like to offer you a special discount on the Dwell conference. You’ll receive $15 off the Dwell Exhibition Plus Ticket (50% off the two-day Weekend Pass) if you purchase tickets online before Friday with the code: DWELL8B

But wait, there’s more! Saturday night, after my last panel at Dwell on Design, I’ll be scurrying up Spring Street to the Spring Arts Tower for our very first de LaB fundraiser: City Listening II.

We’ve got a killer lineup of design writers who are all going to be reading stories about LA, including Frances Anderton on “Living With Gehry,” John Chase ruminating about fun-size Twix bars, Sam Lubell reading bible verses, Tibby Rothman with an amazing (and true) art world story, Nick Adams on LA’s “subway,” Chris Nichols from Los Angeles Magazine, LA Creek Freak Joe Linton, LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, Rico Gagliano from the PRI show The Dinner Party Download, Brooke Hodge, Adrian Glick Kudler, Tom Marble, Marissa Gluck, and letters to LA from 826LA students. And yes, I’ll be reading my annual poem about design in LA. Plus, anyone who arrives by bike or transit receives a very special walking-themed door prize!

We couldn’t have done any of this without our amazing de LaB community. The event decor is currently being laser-etched by Crimson Collective (the same designers who built that giant bird nesting in the center of this year’s Coachella festival), and we’ll have a silent auction featuring items ranging from beautiful custom-built “barchitecture” by Jason King of Somewhere Something, to a walking tour of West Hollywood’s art and urban design with John Chase, to an amazing airplant sculpture by Kara Bartlet’s toHOLD. Plus, I can’t forget the tireless work of our most valuable de LaB community member: Derrick Schultz, who built our website and designed all the beautiful graphics.

We’ll also have delectable Asian-French eats by Flying Pig courtesy of The Architect’s Newspaper, vegan truffles by Nicobella, our well-named de LaB cocktails, and wine courtesy of FORM. And yes, there will be gelato, well, ice cream—did you really think I could throw a party without it? My good friends at Coolhaus will be serving up mini ice cream sandwiches with a very east-of-La Brea flavor: Horchata!

And because if you’ve read this far I really love you, I want to offer you a discount on City Listening tickets as well, if you purchase online before Saturday. Just use delab to get $5 off regular tickets, which include drinks, food and admission to the show; or delabVIP to get $10 off de LaB Groupie Tickets, which include drinks, food and show plus a guerrilla gardening kit from GreenAid, a very good chance at winning great door prizes, and an after party at the Crocker Club, conveniently located below the venue.

Bonus: If you make it to the after party, you just might get to see me collapse after this overload of awesomeness. Hope to see you there!

Last weekend I went on what was probably one of the most magical adventures I have ever been on, less than one hour from Los Angeles.

Everyone knows this place as the Bridge to Nowhere, but more accurately, it’s the East Fork of the San Gabriel River, the river that runs parallel to the LA River through most of LA. We caught up with it just north of Azusa in a pretty easy 10 mile hike—5 miles out, 5 miles back—through a canyon that used to have a road through it until a 1938 flood washed it out. 1938 was the same year, incidentally, that huge floods in LA prompted the paving over of our river banks.

We’ve had quite a bit of rain this year, so the wildflowers were absolutely explosive. (This is something called Sticky Monkeyflower. Not kidding.)

As were the forests of yuccas, many as tall as me.

Since there used to be a road here, there were still some old structures.

But the absolute best part about the hike were the multiple river fordings. I think we did least a dozen, some up to our hips.

Which we didn’t mind at all since it was a cloudless 80-degree day. In fact, we started planning for the next time, when we swore to hike in with innertubes.

Suddenly the river drops down into a canyon, you round a corner in quite literally the middle of nowhere, there’s a bridge, which was completed in 1936—just before the road meant to meet it washed away.

And what could be more natural for a bridge in the middle of nowhere than bungee jumping? In fact, the bridge itself is owned by Bungee America. It felt like we were watching a Juicy Fruit commercial.

Then back out the way we came.

Past the fields of blackberry bushes (a great reason to come back later in the summer).

By some ridiculous rocks that looked like they’d been spatter-painted.

And through all the perfect little swimming holes, some of which, I thought, looked awfully similar to the soft-bottom section of the LA River.

When I was in college, we used to tube down Boulder Creek, which looks a lot like this, except it winds through the middle of a major metropolitan area. What if some day we could do the same in the river that runs through LA? That it could be so clean again, and so natural, we could actually…use it? (Although there are some who have—illegally—kayaked it.)

I put my bare feet in the water at the end of the hike and imagined tubing from Burbank to Downtown, stopping for beers in Silver Lake along the way. I think it could definitely happen.

More photos from the Bridge to Nowhere, and here’s how to get there.

Sometimes when I’m walking around I feel like a giant pink organism is slowly taking over Los Angeles.

Blanketing the city in its relentlessly hot-hot hue of magenta.

Actually, bougainvillea come in pretty much every color of pink, purple orange, red, white, yellow you can imagine.

The paper-thin “blooms” are actually bracts, or specialized leaves, to attract pollinators to the real blossoms, which are super-tiny white flowers tucked inside.

They’re so hardy and strong that once you set them loose, the vines can make for some pretty interesting architecture.

Architecture that just happens to bloom all year round.

Walking on a street in Silver Lake that I’ve walked down easily a thousand times I suddenly had a sensation of brightness, like a mirror was being reflected in my direction. I squinted as I looked around, wondering where all that light was coming from.

It was from this wall of African daisies in full bloom, their little smiling faces arranged in blocks of color, each one more electric than the next.

It was like having a hundred mini-suns shining down on you.

A few weeks ago, I hinted at a very cool new project we were embarking upon at GOOD after I visited the amazing school gardens at Carthay Circle Elementary here in LA. The Carthay garden is an educational oasis in the middle of LA—a lush, thriving outdoor classroom where raised beds are thick with salad greens and trees drip with papayas and bananas. It’s also somewhat of an anomaly. Only 100 LAUSD schools have gardens, which sounds pretty impressive until you realize that we have 900 LAUSD schools. How could GOOD help those other 800 schools get growing?

For inspiration, we looked around GOOD’s neighborhood. And we didn’t have to look far until we saw the hot, flat, forbidding exteriors of Bancroft Middle School, which, as you can see, is about an heirloom tomato’s throw from GOOD. It occurred to us that this is a place design can really help. Coming up with a modular, scalable, affordable idea for how schools can convert those conventional acres of blacktop to a garden can help teachers, parents and administrators get funding and tools to seed their garden project. So last week, we finally launched our latest project where we’re looking for folks like you to Design a School Garden with LAUSD—but the absolute best part about it is that we’re going to build the design of the winner right here in LA, at an LAUSD school in need.

But we’ve got help, lots of help. Here’s part of our team meeting at Carthay Circle, folks from the California School Garden Network, Mia Lehrer & Associates, and the great Environmental Media Network. But the most important person is that guy over to the right, Mud Baron, the LAUSD’s green policy director, who drives around LA in a truck which is filled at all times with 1000 to 4000 seedlings for schools.

When he came to GOOD one day he let us pilfer his mobile nursery (and took some amazing shots of all of us doing it). I packed four dozen teeny vegetable plants into this old coffee cup I found in the trash and took my future garden home on the bus.

I could have put my seedlings in the ground, I suppose. But I realized in order to launch this project, I needed to really dig deep into the issues around it. I needed to see for myself just how easy it would be to build our own outdoor classroom on our slab of concrete. So I reached out to my own in-house designer, Keith Scharwath, to create a raised bed.

A few days, and a little under $200 later, we had an extremely solid planter box.

Which could also double as a great coffin.

What was once concrete and heat is now a food-production center. And we did it in a weekend.

The garden has become the new center of the household. When we wake up in the morning and it’s the first place we look. We can’t stop ourselves from paying a long visit in the afternoons. At night, it’s the topic of the dinner conversation. Now I know what kids at those 800 LAUSD schools are missing. Every student should have this experience. Every adult should have this experience.

What ideas do you have for the ultimate, affordable outdoor classroom? Check out the contest, Design a School Garden with LAUSD (and We’ll Build It!), and please help us spread the word.

The school garden contest illustration is by the amazing Will Etling at GOOD.

If you happened to be strolling past the adorable garden store Mi Alma Collective in Silver Lake over the last few weekends, you may have thought there was a run on vintage planters.

Yes, these people were here for the quirky flea market displays, the extraterrestrial-looking landscaping, the grandma’s-garden-by-way-of-architectural-salvage decor.

But they’re really here for the fish.

In the corner, on most Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, tending to Jaws-size chunks of battered fish bobbing in vats of bubbling oil, wearing his ever-present straw hat, is Ricky, who serves up the best fish tacos (and sometimes shrimp tacos) this side of Baja. And maybe on that side, too.

A little cabbage, some pico, a drizzle of spicy crema, and three kinds of salsa, all made fresh. Then you take your fish tacos and retire to a wrought iron patio set, where you’ll share your table with pebbles, funky cement pottery, and two kinds of cacti. You’ll spend the next 10 minutes trying to figure out what’s in that crispy, delicate batter. Is it mustard? Is it fresh herbs? Does it matter? You’re sitting outside, in the sun, eating to-die-for fish tacos.

What a remarkable little scene that Mi Alma has added to the neighborhood. Today they even had DJs set up on one of the decks and guys selling lemonade and mint cucumber tea. I bet it won’t be too long until they start serving micheladas, too.

With the dearth of open-air, under-the-sun eateries in our perpetually temperate climate, we need more Rickys at Mi Almas all across LA. How about food trucks that deliver a sit-down experience at city nurseries? Chefs whipping up lunches inside community gardens? A beer garden where things actually grow? Until then, every weekend, we have Ricky’s. Succulent fish tacos, with a side of succulents.

Follow Ricky at @RickysFishTacos

With the last wave of rain sweeping the sky clean this morning, suddenly, it really does feel like spring. In LA, we’re lucky enough to get our April showers and our May flowers all at once.

In the blocks around my house, it’s all about roses. The barbed blossoms feel like they’re tumbling over every fence.

And using every available surface as a trellis in an ongoing effort to reach for the sun.