Odds & Ends Around the Valley : Market Watch
Their Life Is a Bed of Irises
Judy and David Mogil of West Hills are accustomed to cars slowing down as they drive past the Mogil home on Vanowen Street. Their front yard is fully planted with irises, each with its own identification tag posted atop a tall stake.
“We have over 1,800 irises,” Judy said. She, her husband and her son, Paul Acosta, operate a mail-order catalogue business for plants.
But not all the plants are located on the Mogils’ property. The two neighbors to the east offered the Mogils their front yards as growing beds. The neighbors’ enjoyment of their unusual front yards is not restricted to the flowers’ beauty. “We don’t have to mow any more,” Fran Stockser pointed out.
Judy Mogil has suffered from a variety of health problems in recent years and is convinced that the flower beds are as good as any medicine. She handles the bookkeeping and the doorbell-ringers. Every day, she inspects each plant and takes notes on its growth. “I have records like you wouldn’t believe,” she said. “It’s therapy for me.”
Every three years, Mogil’s husband and son replenish the beds--removing all the plants and adding manure and various nutrients to the soil. The family ships the irises all over the United States and has waiting lists for some varieties.
“Irises are a lazy man’s delight and a poor man’s orchid,” Judy Mogil said.
Some passers-by have been stumped by the plant. “One person stopped and asked me what kind of grass I was growing when the plants were very short and I had no flowers yet,” Stockser recalled. “I said, ‘Iris grass.’ ”
He’s Been Working on the Freeway
While slogging along the Ventura Freeway, it’s tempting to hope that the new lane they’re adding will improve the flow of traffic. Yet the more cynical among us know that an extra freeway lane is like a spare closet: In the wink of an eye, it gets filled to capacity.
“I believe there’s a better solution to the traffic problem than just adding another lane to the freeway,” said Richard Torres of Sylmar. You would think that Torres would be a little more optimistic than the rest of us: He works full time on the widening project.
But Torres harbors no illusions that his work will unclog traffic. He doesn’t feel as if he’s improving the quality of a freeway driver’s life. “I’m not too thrilled about it,” said the worker, who is also a UCLA engineering student. “Most of the guys working here are for it, but I think it’s a little ridiculous to be spending all this money for just one lane. What we really should do is limit the number of cars.”
Starting with the guy after us.
Deck the Walls With Cows and Cactus
The terrible-2 syndrome ended up being not so terrible for Frankie and Angel Martinez of Calabasas. Their solution to a decorating dilemma in their 2 1/2-year-old son’s bedroom resulted in a thriving business.
“Four years ago, when my oldest son was 2 1/2, he was a big car nut,” mother Frankie recalled. “We had moved to a new house and the walls were blank, but I was disappointed with the wallpaper that was out there.”
She decided to cut car and truck shapes out of contact paper. “It was really tedious, but after we stuck them up, it looked like a mural,” she said. Friends tried to enlist her services for their children’s bedrooms, but Martinez wasn’t about to endure the lengthy process again. “But my husband and I thought, ‘There’s an idea here,’ ” she said.
Much paper work, many meetings and a few years later, the Martinezes are in partnership with 3M Co. for their product called “Decorate-It,” which is sold nationwide. They hired Robert Cole to run the company; Frankie continues to be involved in product development.
What they have created are six, 15-foot-long background story boards (similar to a wider, more free-form border wallpaper). Each story board is accompanied by more than 100 design pieces that can be placed anywhere on or around it. The six themes are “Hares & Bears,” “Fun for All,” “The Voo Zoo,” “Prairie Tales,” “Sea-nanigans!” and “The Lost West.”
The pieces are made of a heavy vinyl material and have a Post-It adhesive backing. “We hired a different artist for each kit, so there are a lot of different styles and colors,” Frankie Martinez said.
Most people place the design midway up the wall, enabling children to move the pieces around as they wish.
“It was just a simple request: ‘I want cars on my wall.’ And it blossomed into this,” Frankie said. “Every day I say to myself, ‘Whoa! This is really happening.’ ”
They retail for about $50 at baby and children’s stores.
Ice Cream on the Run
Only about a dozen of them exist in the United States, and one happens to be in Burbank. The Baskin-Robbins 31 Ice Cream drive-through is situated in the parking lot of a Baskin-Robbins store. Both do a robust business.
The large store occupies space in the company’s training center for new franchisees. “All throughout the year, we have franchisees come to the center for a 2 1/2-week training period,” said Marilyn Novak, director of marketing services. Currently, there are about 30 people enrolled.
“They take classes on financial management, employee training, marketing--and they actually work some time in the five training stores we have in the area,” Novak said. There, they learn how to decorate cakes and make the fountain items.
The most popular treat at the Burbank drive-through is--surprise--the ice cream cone, followed by milk shakes and hot fudge sundaes. How does one drive and eat a hot fudge sundae at the same time?
“If you can telephone and do everything else while you drive, you can probably eat a hot fudge sundae too,” Novak said.
Overheard
“I couldn’t figure out why the local TV news kept looking like a bikini bonanza until I remembered that May is sweeps month. But instead of getting me to watch a show, it makes me change the station.”
One woman to another in the locker room at the Mid-Valley YMCA in Van Nuys
