Yesterday, I glanced at a newspaper photo of the black mustard that’s carpeting the Santa Monica Mountains. To be honest, I always thought it was called wild mustard, but as you’ll see, that’s not the only thing I had wrong.
It immediately brought to mind a long ago incident with one of the daughters. I’m not naming names but she’s the one who encouraged her sisters to sue me for writing about them.
ELBEE I’m thinking of hiring her myself.
It must have been a holiday because she had agreed to go hiking with me and a couple of my friends. Our pace was obviously way too slow for her so I told her to go on ahead. She took off like a shot. Then, a few minutes later, I heard her yelling.
She’d run down a hill and into a huge patch of mustard. It was so tall and dense that she was tangled up in the flowers. She was not happy. I, on the other hand, was hysterical.
ELBEE It’s amazing that the daughters still speak to her.
That reminds me of another occasion when I apparently wasn’t hiking fast enough. A few friends and I were walking with the late, great Wilt Chamberlain. He jokingly, I think, kept telling us to “pick up the pace.” His stride of course was a quarter mile long!
ELBEE That is the most blatant and random name dropping that I’ve ever heard.
As far back as Charley and as recently as Stanley, I’ve loved taking pictures of the dogs with the spring flowers. I even got the husband involved. We had Elbee in the car when I saw a vibrant yellow patch of mustard and decided we needed to sit him in it for a photo.
ELBEE She forgot to mention that we had to climb through a bunch of foxtails to get there. I refused to look at the camera.
When we got home, I sat down to read the article in the Los Angeles Times. That’s when I did a complete u-turn into guilt. The black mustard is not indigenous to Southern California. It’s an “aggressive interloper.” It’s tall so it “hogs the sunlight.” It’s extensive root system allows it to beat the other plants to water.
This year, because of the rains, it’s denser than ever. To make matters worse, not only will it dry out and burn, but because it can grow to six feet, it can become a “fire ladder.” I was shocked because I kind of pride myself on knowing a lot about the native plants. What other mistakes have I made? What other inappropriate photos have I taken.
ELBEE Well, this selfie for starters.
