They say everything is bigger over here, and so it seems. The cars are bigger and the roads are huge. The driving is civilised, at a stop sign you have to stop for 3 seconds and then wait your turn. It’s remarkably  successful!

On to gardening. In smart areas, and we are staying in one, not luxurious by LA standards but pretty smart, there is little gardening activity at the weekend. No sound of lawnmowers and machinery, no one pottering much in the manicured front areas. Very smart gardens in some with a wealth of healthy planting, and almost all are certainly watered automatically by sophisticated systems. The gardening is done by the staff or the gardeners! During the week there are lawns being mowed, or in our case I think it’s swept as it’s all fake grass. Any straying dried out leaves are systematically blown by “Man with machine”, and like many other items over here, the US version seems to be the engine of a large motorbike strapped to the back. Last week I saw one of these guys in action, he was sweeping all the leaves away from the house towards the roadway, within minutes of doing this the council ( if they have such things here ) roadsweeper truck ( again massive, no little brushes on wheels for this beast, it had an enormous roller brush on the back that swept all before it ) came by to take away the leaves just blown there. Gardener obviously knew when the truck was coming and had it all prepared.

This all means that the streets and houses in these parts look immaculate. The exceptions are areas close to the freeway, where the poor and homeless hang out. It’s a country of the very rich and the very poor.

Talking of trucks, take a look at this. In LA there are no bin men, just the truck driver. He grabs the bin using the machine then it slides up and  emptied into the back of the bin truck. He does even have to get out of his seat. So that special breed of man, bin man, is extinct in these areas.