This week we are vacationing with my sister in South Pasadena, a tiny and beautiful enclave in the middle of Los Angeles. I’ll record each day in this blog—she has a lot of excellent things planned in this culture-packed population center!

We drove there, a journey which takes exactly eight hours by car if you don’t stop for lunch. In LA the traffic is like the tides, something you have to plan your journey around. We started off from Tucson at 5:30 a.m. and were able to arrive by 2:30 p.m., missing both the morning and afternoon “tides” and just in time to see my niece perform in her preschool ballet recital, where she was a very cute Aristocat:

I discovered that June is a beautiful month in LA; a constant inland breeze from the ocean keeps the air clear and the skies blue, and the high temperatures of 76° were a welcome contrast to Tucson’s 106° during the same time. The rows of purple jacaranda trees are another unforgettable part of the landscape. A quick picture is better than trying to describe them:

When the wind blew they would gently drop tiny purple leaves in a spectacle so bucolic that it was impossible to remember that we were locked inside of hundreds of square miles of urban labyrinth.

After my niece’s recital, my uncle and aunt joined all of us at my sister’s small but pleasant home. We ate grilled hot dogs in the backyard and afterward the children drew chalk pictures on the ground while the dusk deepened.

(Uncle Cliff’s flyswatter is for the wasps that were interested in sharing our soda.)

I was amazed at how my sister’s house, normally only inhabited by herself and her daughter, could suddenly absorb six more people without feeling cramped, a testament to my sister’s hospitality and her cleverness with the use of space.

Next day: Seal Beach!