Lifestyle
Kamala Harris' Stepdaughter's Secret Service in Altercation, Man Arrested
![Kamala Harris' Stepdaughter's Secret Service in Altercation, Man Arrested Kamala Harris' Stepdaughter's Secret Service in Altercation, Man Arrested](https://imagez.tmz.com/image/cb/16by9/2024/07/30/cb3cd307879f4924be69a929c0cbb3f7_xl.jpg)
TMZ.com
Kamala Harris‘ stepdaughter, Ella Emhoff, ran into a little bit of trouble in the Big Apple this week — or rather, her Secret Service detail did … and it ended with an arrest.
Law enforcement sources tell TMZ … Ella — who’s Second Gentleman Dough Emhoff‘s kid — was out in the Tribeca neighborhood of NYC Tuesday afternoon, where she was grabbing a bite at a restaurant … all while her Secret Service detail was standing guard out front.
We’re told while she was inside, one of her agents — who was dressed in plain clothes — had an altercation with what’s been described to us as an “anti-police watcher.”
Basically … this guy goes around and makes a fuss about NYPD parking placards given to law enforcement agencies … so they can park without having to circle the block a ton.
In this case … our sources say the dude in black came up and started getting into it with the Secret Service agent in blue you see in the video … apparently not realizing he was an agent … assuming he was a cop abusing his parking privileges.
TMZ.com
During the argument — part of which was caught on video and obtained by TMZ, the guy ripped a plate off of one of the Secret Service vehicles … and that’s when cops were called.
You see the dude led away in cuffs. Our sources say he was arrested, but it’s unclear what he was charged with.
An eyewitness tells us Ella and a friend — who were inside the entire time while this was all going down — were rushed out and placed in one of the SUVs, which you see in the video.
TMZ Studios
We’ve reached out to Doug’s people … so far, no word back. The Secret Service tells TMZ that this guy screwed with one of their license plates for no apparent reason — which is why he got detained and ultimately arrested. They note … no protectee of theirs was in danger.
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Lifestyle
A photographer captured the perfect shot of an Olympic surfer's record-breaking ride
![A photographer captured the perfect shot of an Olympic surfer's record-breaking ride A photographer captured the perfect shot of an Olympic surfer's record-breaking ride](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/6561x3691+0+335/resize/1400/quality/100/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fd0%2F12%2Fe7da537f4ac5ab20befefa532b90%2Fgettyimages-2163817418.jpg)
Brazil’s Gabriel Medina reacts after getting a large wave in the 5th heat of the men’s surfing round 3, during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, in Teahupo’o, on the French Polynesian Island of Tahiti, on July 29, 2024.
Jerome Brouillett/AFP/Getty Images
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Jerome Brouillett/AFP/Getty Images
When AFP photographer Jerome Brouillet set out to shoot the third day of the Olympic Games’ surfing competition in Tahiti on Monday, he couldn’t have predicted that he’d capture one of the most iconic moments of the Games so far.
In the fifth heat of the day, Brazilian three-time world champion Gabriel Medina rode through a huge wave, a ride that would nab him a nearly perfect score of 9.90 — an Olympic record. From a boat to the side of the action, Brouillet waited for Medina to surf out of the wave — where he captured the now-viral photo.
Medina, who’s just soared out from the barrel of a treacherous wave, raises an arm toward the sky, index finger pointed upward. His surfboard, tethered to his ankle, is also careening through the air — and, in this millisecond captured by Brouillet, is perfectly parallel with Medina.
![Yolanda Hopkins, of Portugal, wipes out during the second round of the 2024 Summer Olympics surfing competition Sunday.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/3647x3647+1172+0/resize/100/quality/100/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F65%2Fd5%2Fa43397ae440b9e0a2caa8d24f264%2Fap24210735912410.jpg)
“I like to say that taking pictures is a bit like surfing. It’s a mix of preparation, devotion, timing, some experience and a touch of luck,” Brouillet wrote in an Instagram post featuring the photo.
When Medina first entered the wave, one of the biggest of the day, Brouillet could tell that something special was going to happen, he told the AFP. But from his vantage point on a boat with other media covering the event, he said he wasn’t sure what he’d be able to capture. Then, the expert surfing photographer snapped four frames of Medina emerging from the wave, celebrating his run.
“Sometimes he makes an acrobatic gesture and this time he did that and so I pushed the button,” he told the AFP.
In the meantime, the photo has gone majorly viral; Medina himself posted the photo to Instagram, where it’s received more than 5.7 million likes.
The fact that Brouillet was able to snap this photo probably shouldn’t come as much of a surprise — the photographer, who’s worked for the AFP for several years, is a surfer himself and moved to Tahiti about a decade ago, according to Time.
![The tower for judges and field of play are pictured during a surfing training session in Teahupo'o earlier this month.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/2220x2220+555+0/resize/100/quality/100/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F88%2F94%2F5ead3f4648d99c62c555da193b59%2Fgettyimages-2162375403.jpg)
“That day, Gabriel was in the water at the right place, at the right time, and so was I,” Brouillet wrote on Instagram.
The Paris Games’ surfing events have been taking place off the coast of Teahupo’o, a village on the French Polynesian island of Tahiti. Its waters are notorious for the heavy, powerful waves that break over a large but shallow reef. Accordingly, it’s both unnerved and enticed top surfers for decades: “It’s one of the most beautiful and dangerous waves in the world,” pro big-wave surfer Garrett McNamara told NPR.
Lifestyle
'Hacks' peeks behind the curtain of a changing comedy world
!['Hacks' peeks behind the curtain of a changing comedy world 'Hacks' peeks behind the curtain of a changing comedy world](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/1920x1080+0+101/resize/1400/quality/100/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F21%2Ff1%2F7084fd1a4f808e55a38eb3b3f125%2Fmeg-stalter-paul-w-downs-lucia-aniello.jpg)
In addition to being a co-creator of the show Hacks, Paul W. Downs plays Jimmy, the manager of a both Deborah and Ava. The show’s third season has been nominated for 16 Emmy Awards.
Karen Ballard/HBO Max
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Karen Ballard/HBO Max
What does it mean to be a comedy hack, and is it possible for a comic to age without becoming one? That’s one of the central questions that Paul W. Downs and co-creators Lucia Aniello and Jen Statsky explore in the HBO Max comedy series Hacks.
The Emmy Award-winning series, which recently finished its third season, was conceived during a 2015 roadtrip. Downs and his co-creators were headed to Portland, Maine, when they started talking about the idea of contemporary, “cool comedy” — versus humor that young comedians might consider “hacky.”
“We just started talking about this phenomenon and thought, ‘Oh, you know what would be a cool show is a show about an icon of comedy who is misunderstood by someone of a younger generation,’” Downs says. “And so we just emailed each other the idea for the show and kept talking about it for four or five years before we pitched it.”
The series centers on Deborah Vance (played by Jean Smart), a veteran comedian whose career is waning. In response, Deborah’s manager (played by Downs) brings in a Gen-Z comic named Ava (Hannah Einbinder) to help freshen up her act. Along the way, Hacks explores themes of sexism in comedy and the nuances of “cancel culture” — as when some of Deborah’s old offensive jokes resurface.
![Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) is a young writer for legendary stand-up comic Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) in Hacks.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/863x863+291+2/resize/100/quality/85/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F3c%2F74%2F60c9c572482d920d446fc63baf9f%2Fhannah-einbinderer-jean-smart.jpg)
“It’s a comedy, but we also want to make a show that makes people think,” Downs says. “Because if we have … this platform, it’s like, why not make something that makes you … think about something and reframe something you’ve thought about in the past?”
For Downs, Hacks is a family business; he’s married to his co-creator Aniello, who went into labor with their first child while he was acting in and she was directing the final episode of season 2.
“In this particular scene I had to be nervous. And so guess what? I had a lot to draw on,” he says. “We always say that, right now, Hacks is our first born, and our son is our second.”
Interview highlights
On what Deborah and Ava have in common
I think both of them turn to comedy for the same reason that a lot of comedians do — because there was something in their life that was either painful and they needed to laugh through it, or, for some people, they feel isolated or different or “othered,” and it’s a means of connecting with people or it’s a means of, sometimes, self-protection, to make other people laugh. So I think there’s a lot of reasons people come to comedy. But certainly for both of them, they have a similar use of comedy, which is, it’s a defense for them. It’s armor for them. …
!['Hacks' Season 3 is proof that compelling storylines and character growth take time](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/05/03/key-art_4_sq-938fbcc8dff6313389c6c96c11958f34d62c931a.jpg?s=100&c=85&f=jpeg)
For someone like Ava, who grew up lonely, it was a means of feeling connected to other people and making sense of the world and the things that she was observing. So it is certainly the tie that binds. It’s the thing that makes them very much kindred spirits. I think there are some people who are just giddy and funny. Some people are just naturally liquid funny. But I do think that there is certainly truth to the richness of material that comes from a place of pain and hardship.
![Jean Smart and Paul W. Downs in Hacks.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/1920x1080+0+100/resize/1100/quality/50/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fa0%2Fb5%2F0ff8423b4264b184e5667d1a7d2a%2Fjean-smart-paul-w-downs.jpg)
Jean Smart and Paul W. Downs in Hacks.
Jake Giles Netter/HBO Max
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Jake Giles Netter/HBO Max
On whether or not there are lines that should not be crossed in comedy
In the pilot episode, [Deborah] does say, “There is no line. You can make a joke about anything if it’s funny.” … And I think the finer point, though, on that is you can make a joke about anything if it’s funny and if it doesn’t cause harm. … I think the thing is, when you are punching down, it’s lazy. It’s not as funny.
On meeting his collaborators Lucia Aniello (who later became his wife) and Jen Statsky at Upright Citizens Brigade
We made each other laugh. I think that was the thing. We just shared a sense of humor. There’s two things. One, I found both Jen and Lucia so funny, and two, I found myself being funnier because I wanted to make them laugh. I think when you respect someone’s brain and their sense of humor, getting a laugh out of them is sort of like the ultimate. It feels so good. … I think we just gravitated toward each other because we shared a sense of humor, which often is related to a sense of how you see the world and a sense of values, too.
On why they pitch jokes and ideas in email threads
!['Hacks': A Comedic Generational Divide Gets Bridged, (Jean) Smartly](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2021/05/12/102-hacks_jean_smart-and-hannah_einbinderep102_crbomax_f_sq-54ebf8cba23e080ab989f3d2bf9583aa34ecffdc.jpg?s=100&c=85&f=jpeg)
We’ll email [a joke] to the three of us, and then it’s so easily searchable. It’s usually in the moments we’re not working that the muse strikes [and] we have an idea. Something comes to us and we write it down. … We’re on vacation. We’re out to dinner. … So it’s sort of a way to get it filed and then get back to the fun, so you can get the work filed away and you can revisit it when you’re in the writer’s room. But yeah, we do that. We’ve done that for a very long time. We still do it.
On Hacks poking fun at Hollywood only wanting existing intellectual properties, like a Gumby or Operation movie
I do think it’s really hard to sell original ideas. Particularly right now, there’s a real crisis in selling comedy. … I think there’s less appetite to take risks on original voices and original stories. Even when we pitched [Hacks], we thought, ‘Well, a show about two women who do comedy, one of whom is in a waning moment in her career. Will people want to see that?’ And thank God they did. … Unless it’s a sure thing, I do think there’s a lot less risk happening now. … People are afraid to do something that doesn’t work.
On Hacks looking at how late night shows have changed
Exploring the ways in which show business has changed or is changing is really interesting to us because this is obviously a character study about two people. And we always said it was a peek behind the curtain and very much about their lives offstage. But it’s also an examination of entertainment and comedy. It’s really a show about comedy. And so late night, especially for comedians who get their first break on a late night show, whether it’s doing stand-up on a late night show or being interviewed and showing a little bit of their own sense of humor on a late night show, it’s still very much an important marker of your career, I think, especially for comedians. But … it doesn’t necessarily have the same meaning or impact that it did when Carson was on.
Therese Madden and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Clare Lombardo adapted it for the web.
Lifestyle
They turned a junk-filled L.A. yard into a weird and wonderful habitat garden
![They turned a junk-filled L.A. yard into a weird and wonderful habitat garden They turned a junk-filled L.A. yard into a weird and wonderful habitat garden](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/7473de3/2147483647/strip/true/crop/7970x4184+0+566/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F4b%2Fd8%2F2d65b7dd46d692f04855f24d0ef9%2F1463609-wk-0702-casa-apocalyptica-landscape-cmh-24.jpg)
If a wildlife show wanted to film in the middle of Los Angeles, Casa Apocalyptica — a dizzying jungle of native plants, abundant wildlife, soothing water and salvaged debris — would be a great place to land.
Here, slender salamanders slink through the leaf litter under robust stands of Santa Cruz Island buckwheat and California fuchsia. Dozens of bright red flame skimmer dragonflies chase around a hand-dug pond and rubble-strewn stream.
By day, birdsong is as omnipresent as Muzak at a mall; frogs serenade the night. Near the house, a couple of koi as big as human babies lurch out of their long, raised pool for a head pat and their favorite treat — slices of watermelon.
Except for a few fruit trees, almost every plant in the ground is native to California, including the Roger’s Red grapes that grow in a lush tangle over arbored patios, cooling the temperatures beneath a good 10 degrees — and all thriving without regular irrigation.
Koi fish munch on watermelon in the backyard of Chris Elwell and Kory Odell’s Mid-Wilshire home.
![An overhead view of a koi pond with greenery around it.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/7d0aefe/2147483647/strip/true/crop/7598x5125+0+0/resize/2000x1349!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F25%2Ff6%2Fd84a35654d389bd836a4041cb98d%2F1463609-wk-0702-casa-apocalyptica-landscape-cmh-26.jpg)
An overhead view of the koi pond.
And most remarkable: This whole part art, part wilderness adventure is contained in the sloping, 12,000-square-foot yard that surrounds a grand 1910 Craftsman home renovated by Chris Elwell and Kory Odell after the spouses bought the dilapidated property in 2003 in the small Mid-Wilshire neighborhood known as Oxford Square.
Their abundant native landscape growing out of 100 years of detritus-turned-garden treasures has earned them mythic status in the native plant world, and made them a must-see fixture on the Theodore Payne Foundation’s spring Native Plant Garden Tours for more than a decade.
“Casa Apocalyptica imagines our native ecology returning through the rubble after people are gone,’” the couple wrote in this year’s garden tour explainer. But nature got a lot of help from the two men, and if they’d known then how much work it would require, Elwell said, shaking his head, who knows if they would have gone ahead.
Except, listening to them talk, it’s clearly work they relished.
They’d wanted to move into a neighborhood of old homes in 2003, but the massive Craftsman mansion they chose was in terrible shape. Bars covered every window, neither the plumbing nor the electricity worked and all the trademark natural wood had been painted white. The backyard was full of rubble.
“Our friends and family thought we were nuts. They were like, ‘Why are you putting all this time and effort into this old wreck of a house?’” Elwell said.
![Two men stand in a yard, holding shovels.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/2ff9a1a/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4900x7350+0+0/resize/2000x3000!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Ff2%2F8a%2F1e953a4742c48951ff3b7c2526b0%2F1463609-wk-0702-casa-apocalyptica-landscape-cmh-05.jpg)
Kory Odell, left, and Chris Elwell in their yard at Casa Apocalyptica.
“But Kory had grown up working on houses, and we wanted a project, and a big yard for a garden,” he added. “The house was more than we’d bargained for, but we were obsessed with building something ourselves and making it authentic to us. And I like the beauty of things that are being overlooked. I felt like there were all these cool neighborhoods right under our noses and everybody’s ignoring them.”
The restoration took most of their free time, but it was also therapeutic, an artistic outlet after a stressful day at work, Elwell said. “But the garden sat for some time because we had so much to do on the house.”
It wasn’t until 2007 that they began on the yard, Elwell said, and both were still working full-time. Odell, now part of the executive team building the Metro Purple Line, was working with a midsize construction firm. And Elwell, now retired, was a television distribution executive with Sony Pictures.
Once again, their free time went to transformation. The front yard was a dense thicket of “freeway ice plant” that required several dumpster loads to haul away, and the bare-dirt sloping backyard was full of interesting trash that people had been dumping for 100 years — “old motorcycle parts, water heaters from the 1920s, horseshoes, lots of whiskey bottles, and lots of old cobblestones and bricks and building materials.”
To their eyes, the “junk” was weirdly wonderful, and it gave them their theme: L.A. after the apocalypse, with native plants growing in and around society’s broken remains.
![A rusted metal contraption sits surrounded by plants.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/c29530c/2147483647/strip/true/crop/5461x8192+1+0/resize/800x1200!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fa3%2Fb4%2Fdd912d344020982b2521eaa7ac18%2F1463609-wk-0702-casa-apocalyptica-landscape-cmh-13.jpg)
A rusted metal contraption sits surrounded by plants.
![Plummer's mariposa lily.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/0d4eef2/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4278x6417+70+0/resize/800x1200!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F73%2Fd9%2F62c42ab3492a885167a39ed1aac5%2F1463609-wk-0702-casa-apocalyptica-landscape-cmh-20.jpg)
Plummer’s mariposa lily.
![A candelabra rests at the bottom of the front yard pond.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/a86dd2e/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6218x4145+0+0/resize/2000x1333!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fe1%2F47%2F5f3837d94cc18766d19981619b9f%2F1463609-wk-0702-casa-apocalyptica-landscape-cmh-12.jpg)
A candelabra rests at the bottom of the front yard pond.
The salvaging got to be kind of joke. Odell’s firm was doing earthquake retrofits, and during site demolitions he’d discover some new artifacts, like industrial-sized valves that might have been used in oil fields or a box of long rusty files. “So I’d be at work,” Elwell said, “and get this text with photos of something like an old radiator followed by this question: ‘TREASURE?’”
Neighbors got into the act as well, inviting the couple over to look at things their elders had squirreled away decades earlier. “They’d say, ‘Dad hasn’t opened that door in 20 years; let’s see what’s in there.’”
The landscaping was part inspiration and part experiment, guided by fun, Elwell said, and plenty of mistakes.
One of the first was going whole hog into native plants without understanding anything about them. For instance, Odell loved the manzanitas that grow prolifically around his family’s 40-acre ranch in Shasta County.
So they got a tractor and dug one up to replant in L.A. “It looked great for about six weeks, and then it died,” Elwell said. “That’s how naive we were. So it became a research project — how do you get these things to grow?”
Their research led them to the website of Las Pilitas Nursery, a Santa Margarita grower specializing in California native plants. Bert Wilson, its founder, died in 2014, but his extensive descriptions about native plants “are super helpful to beginners,” Elwell said. “He approached it with a level of fun, writing things like, ‘I know this plant is really tough because we’ve run over it with a tractor several times and it always comes back.’”
![Many of the metal objects in the yard have been overtaken by the plant growth.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/2ec3923/2147483647/strip/true/crop/8192x5464+0+0/resize/2000x1334!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F00%2F77%2Fce11e62240968c8ccf1b421964a6%2F1463609-wk-0702-casa-apocalyptica-landscape-cmh-23.jpg)
Many of the metal objects in the yard have been overtaken by the plant growth.
From there, they began frequenting the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley, one of Southern California’s premier native plant nurseries, “and as a new gardener, I just wanted to buy everything,” Elwell said. “I was treating the plants more like furniture than ecology. I’d say, ‘Oh, that looks cool.’ I was not thinking, ‘Does it really make sense to plant something that normally grows on an alpine slope at sea level in clay soil?’”
As their knowledge grew, their focus shifted to creating habitat for regional pollinators, birds and other animals. And habitats need water, a realization that had unexpected benefits.
When Odell broke his elbow in a mountain biking accident, he quickly mastered the simple rehabilitation exercises his doctor provided. So when Elwell said he wanted a pond in the front yard, Odell was immediately on board.
“He’s just the kind of person where you point out what you want to do, and he says, ‘OK, let’s go,’” Elwell said. “So he just went charging in with a pickaxe to dig out the hole and a 30-pound digging bar to move the boulders” for a roughly 8-by-12-foot pond, complete with a small waterfall fed by recirculating water (flowing through an oversized recycled spigot) and a large boulder that he drilled out in the middle to provide a gentle bathing area for tiny drinkers. Oh, and a now-large toyon and mountain mahogany on either side to provide partial shade.
When Odell returned for a checkup a few weeks later, his doctor was amazed at how well his arm had healed. “He said, ‘How did you do that?’” Odell said, “And I said, ‘By doing everything you told me not to do.’”
They did bring in a contractor to build the spacious patios off the kitchen and living room, a long narrow koi pond with a Medusa head fountain and a wide swimming pool that follows the slope of the hill.
![A fountain bearing a relief of Medusa's head pours into the koi pond in the backyard.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/78ec9f8/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4895x7342+156+0/resize/800x1200!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F3b%2F91%2Ff2c8d65c4d558ce9caae9d628614%2F1463609-wk-0702-casa-apocalyptica-landscape-cmh-19.jpg)
A fountain bearing a relief of Medusa’s head pours into the koi pond in the backyard.
![Naked buckwheat's pink flowers.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/40f18ca/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4981x7472+126+0/resize/800x1200!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F31%2Fd7%2Fc81606fd42e4b29be044cc84c01f%2F1463609-wk-0702-casa-apocalyptica-landscape-cmh-07.jpg)
Naked buckwheat.
![A view of a backyard with a large pool and lots of plants.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/ed20c10/2147483647/strip/true/crop/7891x5204+0+0/resize/2000x1319!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fed%2F47%2Ff090b4a04aaea0fa0bd388f95607%2F1463609-wk-0702-casa-apocalyptica-landscape-cmh-25.jpg)
The backyard of the home features a swimming pool nearly enveloped by large stands of native plants.
But that’s where their “modern” landscaping stops. Instead of lawn or little potted palms around the pool, there are oversize stands of desperado sage, a fragrant hybrid between white sage and purple sage, growing so untamed they’re nearly spilling into the pool.
Odell rented an excavator to slice the bottom of the slope into a cliff, shored up by the dirt excavated for the pool, along with recycled broken concrete and other rubble. He used old railroad tracks to create steps down to the bottom of the slope. He carved out a narrow ditch between the cliff and steps, and that became a recirculating stream that flows into a little marsh full of frogs, butterflies and dragonflies.
Like their home, the yard is divided into “rooms,” or separate experiences, so sitting by the pool, you can’t see the koi pond with its restless fish or the little stream burbling just 10 feet away, or the ornate handmade pergola that offers shade at the bottom of the hill.
Walking this yard is an adventure that reveals itself slowly. Years ago a Mama Bear manzanita (Arctostaphylos ‘Mama Bear’) finally took hold in their side yard, almost entirely covering the old driveway; further up, a hedge of citrus trees produce lemons the size of mangoes.
![Plastic planters collect cobwebs on a shelf in the yard.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/f830a0e/2147483647/strip/true/crop/5337x8006+0+25/resize/800x1200!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F6f%2F38%2F070fd8aa4140b08396a6d14ae21f%2F1463609-wk-0702-casa-apocalyptica-landscape-cmh-21.jpg)
Plastic planters collect cobwebs on a shelf in the yard.
![A dragonfly lands on a plant](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/22904fd/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4098x6147+183+0/resize/800x1200!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Ff2%2F78%2Faba546c047f39a181e2b27ea18e3%2F1463609-wk-0702-casa-apocalyptica-landscape-cmh-02.jpg)
A dragonfly lands on a plant near one of the yard’s water features.
There are a few other fruit trees on the property, but mostly it’s a riot of native plants with enough variety that even in the summer, when many California native plants go dormant, the garden is full of fragrance and color — bright purple wands of woolly blue curls that smell as sweet as bubble gum; sticky yellow and red monkeyflowers, tall mallows with large flowers in orange and lavender, pinkish white bouquets on the narrow milkweed and sunflowers and fuchsias nearly ready to bloom.
Needless to say, friends and family don’t question their decision now. They deliberately designed the outdoors for entertaining, with a huge welcoming table off the kitchen and bobbing solar lanterns in the clear inviting pool. And over the years they bought the houses on either side of them, and now rent them out to a nephew and friends.
The gates between the properties are always open, and when it’s time for loved ones to gather, Elwell said, it’s only a matter of when — the “where” is never a question.
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