Jenga at the Nob Hill Haus

During those long winter nights, there's nothing better than a warm fire, good company, a drink and a fun game. For architects and Non- architects alike and for all ages, Jenga, the wood block stacking game is always a fun challenge. And we all thrive to new heights, as you can see here in the picture above. It almost seems like I have seen the stack of blocks in reality as a high rise apartment building in China before...

Happy New Year

we hope all of you had a good start in 2012- As our clean up work in the yard continues we can offer now free wood splitting workout sessions to all our friends- there's enough wood in the backyard for months to come :)
The Nob Hill Haus is also participating in a pilot project by the LA County Health Department to establish the safety of stored rainwater- One out of a total of six projects in a county of 16 million people! Once a month over the course of a year, water samples are taken from the cistern and analyzed in a lab. We are really curious what the findings will be and keep you posted about the results.

Some icing on the cake

That’s what the last rains brought us - kinda. Mount Wilson received a nice light sprinkle of white and made us remember that we can have everything here after all- Snow and surf. Mount Baldy (or Mount San Antonio to be correct) has had snow for some time now and is mostly hidden behind the clouds.
We also made some progress with the cleanup after the storm- after the tree crew was done chopping down the huge trunk (firewood for years to come) the full amount of the damage became obvious. The worst for us, though, is the landscaping. The area where the tree hit was our most beautiful spot- and now it looks like a plane went through. Some of the palms may recover, but some got hit really hard and I can only hope, that they will survive and heal in time.
One look at the bright side- we now have an extended view towards the Northwest and see the Verdugo Hills and Mount Lukens now.

Disaster strikes the Haus

In the night from Wednesday to Thursday, unusually strong winds hit the North East. From Pasadena to NELA, trees toppled and power lines went down. The winds reached speeds of up to 120 mph -this compares to a category 2 hurricane! Around 3AM the unthinkable happened: The huge Aleppo Pine tree in the rear that we had pruned only three years ago could not withstand these winds and started to fall uphill towards the house! It narrowly missed the roof, but hit the balcony, deck and devastated the entire garden including the wall of the future jacuzzi area. The rail on top was squished like hot spaghetti! For the next 2.5 days, electricity was down, traffic lights didn't work and we had a hard time to find someone who could remove the tree so that we could assess the whole damage- Pasadena and South Pas look a lot worse- many trees had come down there and crews were working long shifts to free roadways again. We finally found a crew that was able to cut down the tree in an afternoon and haul the foliage away (we kept the trunk for firewood. The palm tree garden is gone entirely including the ground cover- and the trees will most likely not recover.
But we got lucky in bad luck- if the tree had fallen on our neighbors house which is closer to it, it had caused a lot more damage.

PRESENTATION WILL BE AT 7.30 TONIGHT (11-14-2011)

Nob Hill Haus- Virtual Tour

If you haven't had a chance yet to come to one of the open houses, there'll be one more chance to get on a virtual tour of the Nob Hill Haus:

On November 14, at 7PM as part of the Mount Washington Homeowners Alliance general meeting. The location will be the Carlin G. Smith Recreational Center at 511 W. Ave 46 in 90065 (Mount Washington).

So if you want to learn more about the house (and how it has been performing so far)or would like to ask Frank any questions, that's for now the last chance to do so as we haven't planned any more events this year.

Stapelia Gigantea

The little not very prominent plant started to develop flowers earlier last week- and finally, one of them started to open this morning. Unfortunately, they will only last a single day, so I won't be able to take another shot of the fully opened specimen. While closed, the buds resemble the domes of orthodox churches. Stapelia is also called carrion plant and uses flies as their primary pollinator (it attracts flies with a rotten smell). But apart from the distinctive fragrance, the flowers are really spectacular.