Lost a friend.

These are just some pictures. My daughter took some and so did I.

This was where Flo Itkin lived, in Mandeville Canyon.

My friend, Flo, and my children's great aunt, died the first week of this month. She had been ill and fighting Parkinson's. My son and I went to see her just the week before. She wanted to be at home and not at the hospital. We visited her. She was so little. She had been so big so vital so important to us all. I held her hand for a short while until that became too hard for her.


Flo loved her backyard with all of its visiting birds. She adored hummingbirds.

She was a friend when no one else would be. She would listen when no one else would. She loved no matter what. Thank you, Flo.


The Ceanothus was in bloom. Flo loved plants and gave them to her friends and family. And at this time, they were in bloom and fully fragrant. She would have loved them.

She understood how much I wanted to go back to school to get a degree. She knew how much art was part of me. It was Flo who sent a letter to me telling me of the scholarship in art at Mount St. Mary's College. Thank you, Flo.



My daughter, trying to be 'together' while walking about the 'empty' house, needed to go up the side of the canyon just above her house.