House and Home

Q & A with Gardening for Geeks's Christy Wilhelmi: Black Thumbs, Raccoon-Deterrents Why Garden Hoses Are Scary

What is it about Christy Wilhelmi's three-minute tip-of-the-week podcast Gardenerd that makes it feel like essential listening? Is it that it's so short and informative? Or maybe that Wilhelmi's pealing bell voice makes everything garden-related -- even getting rid of pesky powdery mildew -- sound e ... More >>

Watch Ron Finley's TED Talk, South Central's Guerrilla Gardener

Ron Finley is a gardener, but not in the puttering-in-the-backyard kind of way. Rather, the artist and designer refers to himself as a "guerrilla gardener," using the growing of food as a way to try to change the dynamics of his neighborhood: South Central L.A. In a TED talk, given in Long Beach i ... More >>

Bed Bugs Reported at L.A. Central Library

See also: "Report: Los Angeles Now Has More Bed Bugs Than New York" and "Women Surprised to Find Bed Bugs at $62 Glendale Motel, Sue." At least two bed bugs have been spotted at L.A. Central Library in the last month -- one on August 9, crawling across a reference desk in the Science & Technology D ... More >>

Michelle Obama's White House Kitchen Garden Book Out Today

Michelle Obama's first book, American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America, hits the bookstores today. Just in time for summertime gardening, for your kids' summer vacation projects (Cook your own dinner! Build your own compost bin!), and even for a season of ... More >>

Mayita Dinos: Much Ado About Water

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2012 issue. Check out our entire People 2012 issue here. Mayita Dinos' soft hands belie the fact that she's dug through acres of stubborn subsoil on a one-woman crusade to mulch, harrow and hoe as much of Los Angeles as possible. She ... More >>

Post & Beam Launches Gardening Club This Weekend

Looking to get dirty this weekend? Baldwin Hill's Post & Beam is launching the first of its summer series of Gardening Club workshops this weekend with help from horticulturalist Geri Miller and head chef Govind Armstrong. The arrival of spring means that vegetables like basil, peppers, squash, eggp ... More >>

What's In A Rose Name? The Food Hybrid Tea Varietals (Whiskey, Too) Planning Your Own Rose Cocktail Garden

Wander around any formal rose garden with name plaques this time of year (The Huntington, Palisades Park in Santa Monica), and you'll likely bump into several Hollywood celebrity stunners like Marilyn Monroe (a tall apricot flower with "large bloom size," per the official description). In the rose-n ... More >>

Rubus Ursinus: A Guide to the Elusive Pacific Blackberry

With Occupy Gone, City Hall Ponders a Progressive Landscape

The ouster of Occupy L.A. left City Hall Park with dirt where once there was turf. And when ideas started coming in about what should be done to restore the landscape that adorns the symbolic center of the city, the range of opinions was something akin to those within Occupy L.A.: widely varied, ... More >>

Cookbook Review: The Complete Kitchen Garden, Your Weekend Entertainment

​If you already consider yourself an urban homesteader, (legal or otherwise), then the recently released The Complete Kitchen Garden: An Inspired Collection of Garden Designs and 100 Seasonal Recipes by Ellen Ecker Ogden probably is not for you. For the rest of us, this hybrid gardening/cookbo ... More >>

Crossing the Line: A Space by Tanya Aguiniga

A Marriage of Craft and Design: The Work of Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman

When Bed Bugs Attack: New Wave Of Critters Reported In L.A. County, Beverly Hills Area

Ah, the luxurious bed bug of Beverly Hills.​As if you don't have better things to worry about -- unemployment, global warming, the latest revelation on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills -- L.A. County health officials report that more bed bugs are invading the metropolis, particularly the t ... More >>

Suzanne Rheinstein

Orchid Show and Sale

Facebook Survey Says Bed Bugs Makes Dating More Challenging

​ Attention singles: You can add bed bugs on your checklist of things to worry out about when searching for that special someone. A new survey released by AreYouInterested.com, a Facebook application, revealed that bed bugs complicates the already challenging world of dating. Angelenos should ... More >>

NYC Niketown Closes Due To Bedbugs -- Another Reason L.A. Is Better Than NYC

Thousands of these suckers at Niketown -- that's NYC for you.​There's been a lot of smug talk coming from back East about how New York City continues to thrive and evolve and is home to lots of movie sets and cool TV shows and bands and art and authors, while L.A. has hit a funk, with the goof ... More >>

L.A. Is In The Top 10....For Bedbug Infestation.

​Proving once again that the Weekly is your place for bedbug news. According to exterminator Terminix, Los Angeles ranked No. 10 in bedbug infestation nationwide, the Los Angeles Daily News reports. At least we're not New York, which leads the country in bedbugs. Bedbugs are small, delightfu ... More >>

Awful: Bed Bugs Infest Entire Building In Arlington Heights

​ Much of the frightening coverage of the return of the bed bug has been focused on New York City. See, for instance, this New York magazine piece on bed bugs infesting upscale apartments on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. But the bed bug is here, in all of its awfulness.

REVENGE OF THE FERNS

What's the Story, Morning Glory?

Sometimes it's late and the cocktails have started to creep up on you and a double-chili-cheese at Tommy's is the thing. But for us, slightly more often, a hard seat and an order of fried morning glory are just what we need after a night of serious drinking. Nobody knows why morning glory is a veget ... More >>

'Real Housewives' Set To Start Shooting In Beverly Hills In March

BravoVicki and Donn from OC.​There have been Real Housewives in Orange County, New York, New Jersey, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. But common now, how real can they be if the Bravo reality show hasn't been to housewife heaven -- Beverly Hills? After reports of casting calls last year, the Dai ... More >>

Top 10 Ways to Eat Local in L.A.

So you've read The Omnivore's Dilemma and watched Food, Inc twice, but you still aren't quite sure how to eat local in Los Angeles. The city is covered in exhaust smoke, and it's harder to imagine growing food here then being one of those people who, um, walk. Still for all its metropolitan appearan ... More >>

SUPER FREAKY PICK OF THE WEEK

SUPER-FREAKY PICK OF THE WEEK!

Worm Teas and Palisades Potagers: Organic Gardening Classes With John Lyons

John Lyons, the organic gardener and edible landscape designer behind The Woven Garden, offers educational classes to inspire the cabbage farmer within. His 6-week course, "From the Earth Up," covers composting your dinner leftovers, herb garden care, organic pest control, and crop rotation (sans th ... More >>

When the Growing Gets Tough: Take a Workshop with Silver Lake Farms' Tara Kolla

Tara Kolla knows gardening can be daunting. Take her case: She works her half-acre backyard and business, Silver Lake Farms, almost entirely by herself. For the past three years, she's been showing beginners the ropes with semi-weekly workshops in her neighborhood. (The next one is Thu., July 30.) A ... More >>

Cockroach Sushi For Your Delectation

Chrissy Prusha makes cockroach sushi out of felt. She is 28 years old, lives in Hollywood, and goes by the name "Felted Chicken." Ordinarily, Prusha is a scenic sculptor who sculpts styrofoam into props, movie sets, and theme park rides. Work has been slow lately, however, which gives her time to co ... More >>

Looking for Jesus at Home Depot: Or, How a Day Laborer Named Tino Ended Up in a Miller Duvall Music Video

The gold teeth didn't hurt

Gardeners of Eden Suddenly Cast Out

Freelance gardeners, house cleaners and car-wash employees are among the first workers hit by the recession. With the economy in accelerating freefall, statistics cannot keep up with their deteriorating plight. Still, the physical absence of such workers from neighborhoods and businesses provides pl ... More >>

The Insect-Human Duet: A Field Guide

Bug-eyed home companion

¡Ask a Mexican! Spanish as a First Language

"What is it with Mexican gardeners? They lop off trees into coat racks, and shear off irises and lilies. It’s all slash and mow and blow."

Gut Reactions

How the contents of a termite’s stomach may revolutionize your car

Cooking 101

For the culinary hipsters in all of us

Brown Dirt Cowboys

Meet Esteban Hills and crew, your gardeners

Paradise Created

Mysterious, private and sensual . . . the backyard in Los Angeles

Bubba Onboard

Expert Advice: Caterer's Dish

It’s a Wrap

Finding the right gift

Drive, He Said

Counter Intelligence throws a party — or 10 tips for no-cook entertaining

The Pleasure Principle

Michelle Huneven on dinner parties

Makeover 2

Photos by Larry Hirshowitz

Makeover 3

Photos by Jack Gould

The Exterminators

Rats and roaches and the men (and women) who kill them for us

The Exterminatrix

The Big Buh-Bye

Flower Power

Flower Power Games

The delirious rise and acrimonious dissolution of the Eastside Ladies Garden Auxiliary