It's sweet pea season at the farmer's market, where four dollars gets you that girls-in-their-summer-dresses feeling without having to change your clothes.

I like the dimples and ripples, how the surface hints at the rocks and grasses and shifting sand below.

Kanan Road is one long spray of gold these days as the Spanish broom (bad news -- it's an invasive non-native) has a spectacular bloom thanks to late and plentiful rain.

On the holiday that our beloved PCH goes from jam-packed to just plain jammed for the next three months, let us think back to a simpler time.

One of the last places to escape the internal combustion engine, except you can't.

It's close to seven years ago that Granita, arguably the best restaurant in town, the spot you'd often see Johnny Carson dining with friends in his favorite front booth, shut its doors after a new landlord raised the rent.

See how well that turned out?

Oh Maisie.

She had her teeth cleaned yesterday and, thanks to a mid-air collision with Jake a few years back in which they both went for the ball and knocked heads so hard all three of us saw stars, she had to have a tooth pulled.

And because the Muffinhead is a delicate flower, she came out of the anesthesia howling like a banshee, and for the next NINE HOURS continued to vocalize her discontent until finally, at 10:30 last night, she fell asleep.

So here she is this morning, a bit shaken by the whole ordeal, accepting hugs and kisses from her sickbed and urging anyone who wanders within eye contact to consider her psychic pain and pretty please, fetch her another treat.

First of all, yes, this is Los Angeles. And that's the wall of morning fog seeping over the crest of the Santa Monica mountains, only to evaporate in the hot morning sun.

We crossed paths with this cyclist on Cornell Road, one of the through routes here before the advent of the 101 Freeway. He was peddaling along, greeting the day laborers, his dog happily taking in the landscape.

The sheerest mist as the sun rose, acted like a lens, refracted the light and it was the blue side of the the spectrum that rang out.

Tender new growth on the prickly pears we know and love.

Rounded the bend on our walk yesterday and there, backlit by sunrise, a fawn. Reached for the camera and realized no, coyote. A big one. Reached for Maisie instead -- the Tiny Lab loses her tiny mind around the wild ones -- and got that jolt that comes from eye contact with an utterly untamed being. Kept walking.

No photo of any of it, so instead here's a bunny near the Meyer lemon up at the barn, blithely nibbling grass not a hundred feet from where two coyote pups live with mom in a den in the arroyo, all of them raising their voices in salute to the sirens on PCH.

Silly wabbit.

A warning we all take seriously around here, for ourselves and our pets. Steer clear. And consider getting a rattlesnake vaccine for the dogs in your life. If you live around here, the vets at Malibu Coast Animal Hospital can tell you how it works.

WIldflowers everywhere you look here in the Malibu hills.

The rising sun tricked the camera and everything, everywhere, turned gold.

She's out there somewhere, honest.

See?

Right after those enormous whales swam by, this tiny hummingbird landed on a shrub next to us.

I love when they look at you as you take their picture.

...the whales headed north.

Have you ever loved or cared for anyone or anything?

Then happy Mother's Day! Have another mai tai pancake!

OK, it really happened last month, the grand (re)opening of the Malibu branch of the LA County Library, but it's so light and bright and new and lovely, we're all still acting as though it was just a minute ago.

Here's the new patio, with trees and benches and a view of the park. That blue walkway is actually soft and spongy, makes you want to drop and do a few somersaults:

And here's the new lobby, complete with a reproduction Malibu Pottery tile rug, a with tromp l'oeil fringe.

Beautiful.

Surfers around here know Cal Porter as the all-around waterman who has spent his whole life here on the SoCal coast. History buffs mine his blog, Then and Now, for pix and stories about surfing and life on the California beach.

Shawn Hubler, a former LAT writer who now works with Zev Yaroslovsky, just featured Cal in a great post about the history of LA's lifeguards. (Cal's the guy on the right.)

For yours truly, he's the guy who regularly kicks my derriere in Boggle and Quiddler and Upwords. Sometimes, he gets a little soft-hearted and lets me win.

The gray day mutes the colors a bit but the path to the beach is in full bloom.

There's a bend in the creek here where the bachelors hang out, a group of five drakes who have banded together. You'll see them sleeping and sunning and swimming and, when the mood strikes, posing for a group portrait.

A welcome bit of brightness (Hi, Dwight!) in our May gray landscape.

No matter what the sun or shadows are doing, the bark of this enormous oak always looks like it's lit from within.

The heron returned to the lake this morning.

We're all hoping that means there's a nest nearby.

Handsome, isnt he?

The Exposition Line of the LA Metro opened last Saturday:

And some friends and I joined thousands of other jubilant Angelenos on its maiden voyage:

Look! It's the 99 Cent Chef!

We rode to the end of the line, where the city was holding a party:

One of my favorite parts? I mean, beside getting from the west side to downtown in 15 comfy, carefree minutes? Being reminded of how beautiful the older buildings are:

Seriously. Who makes things like this any more?

The weather here has been practicing for its annual May gray/June gloom hazing ritual in which it'll be sizzling in the city, and hot chocolate weather at the fogged-in beach.

But today the sun rose in a clear sky and oh my, it was lovely.

I love how beautifully this yucca is blooming:

And how this photo proves the sky here has actually been blue:

I'd tell you exactly what he said but this site is rated PG.

The first appearance by the first ducklings to hatch on the lake.

Awww...