Kelp

Before the bulldozers arrived last June, Malibu Lagoon was a fully grown habitat for egrets, voles and tidewater gobies, studded with sycamore trees and clusters of tule reeds. Today, the lagoon's islands appear almost barren, covered by a sea of tiny red and blue plastic flags marking young plants just taking root. Depending on whom you talk to, the lagoon has been restored - or ruined. On Friday, bureaucrats, biologists and birders will descend on the state beach at the mouth of Malibu Creek for the ribbon cutting to mark what state officials are calling "the long and successful journey toward restoration.

In September I wrote about an unsettling incident in which I'd found high levels of lead in the chard I'd grown in a backyard planter box filled with store-bought soil. According to the head of the lab that did the testing, I shouldn't have eaten more than one-quarter pound of the leaves a day or I'd risk lead poisoning. The results were enough to make me rip out all the leafy greens I'd been growing in my custom-built planter and throw them into the black trash bin, not even the green waste bin or my compost pile, because I didn't want this stuff recycled.

Looking for an easy-to-grow perennial that blooms throughout summer and fall, and attracts birds and butterflies? Plant yarrow. This drought-tolerant plant is a proficient bloomer and comes in a variety of colors, including yellow, white, lavender, red, pink, cream, apricot and terra cotta. "The flowers are great cut, and dry really well," says Mary Lou Heard, owner of Heard's Country Gardens in Westminster.

Nearly a quarter century ago, my family discovered the beaches of Baja California, and for years after that, we never vacationed anywhere else. No more Mammoth. No more Yosemite. No more King's Canyon. Why bother? We'd struck gold. We'd found a place that was close to home yet exotic and foreign, a place with perfect beaches, a place where you could eat lobster in a fisherman's living room for laughably little money.

Dylan Bruno bobbed buoy-like in his lizard-patterned wetsuit and offered some advice: "Just kind of float there for a minute. " I lowered myself into the water after not-so-gracefully wriggling into a wetsuit, gloves, hood, booties, snorkel - all the attire a woman hopes to be wearing upon meeting a chisel-cheeked actor turned avid spearfisherman. "Get comfortable," he said when I joined him. I dipped my face into the water and peered down. Kelp forests swayed 20 feet below. Garibaldi fish slowly moved out from their hiding spots and jerked back into them again.

A body discovered in a kelp bed off the southwestern shore of Santa Rosa Island was identified Friday as that of Elwin O. Swint Jr., who disappeared in late August while diving for sea urchins, authorities said. An autopsy Friday concluded that the 53-year-old Santa Barbara resident drowned, said Santa Barbara Sheriff's Sgt. Bill Turner. Swint's body was spotted Thursday afternoon by passengers in a commercial fishing boat, Turner said. He was last seen Aug.

Tal Ronnen, a chef aiming to bring veganism to the masses, opens "plant-based" restaurant Crossroads on Melrose Avenue on Thursday. The menu at Crossroads, Ronnen's first L.A. restaurant, features his vegan, Mediterranean-influenced small plates in a chandeliered, wood-floored dining room designed by Studio Collective. Ronnen, author of "The Conscious Cook," teamed with entertainment and hospitality veterans Steve Bing and Parnell F. Delcham to open the white-tablecloth, all-vegetable restaurant in the former Phillipe Chow space at the corner of Sweetzer Avenue.

The radiation leaking from crippled nuclear power plants in Japan has unleashed fears on this side of the ocean. Despite assurances from experts that the amount of radiation reaching the U.S. is miniscule and harmless, many people here are worried that the fallout could pose a serious health threat. And if William McBride's inbox is any indication, they're also wondering whether they should protect themselves by taking supplements or changing their diets. "I've been getting emails from friends asking me if they should take this or that," said McBride, professor of radiation oncology at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The search continued Tuesday for the missing companion of a young woman killed in a shark attack last week, while news of the UCLA graduate student's violent death stunned classmates and faculty members on the Westwood campus. Members of Roy Jeffrey Stoddard's family were arriving at his Malibu home, still hopeful that he would be found alive, even though it has been more than five days since he set out from Malibu on a short morning kayaking excursion with his girlfriend, Tamara McAllister.

Edison International's Southern California Edison unit got state permission to build a $22-million, 150-acre kelp forest off San Clemente, near its nuclear power plant. The forest would be part of a reef that helps fulfill an environmental commitment made by Edison, California's second-largest utility, when it got approval to build the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, the Rosemead company said. The kelp forest was approved after a 15-year study showing that the power station might be discharging cloudy water that reduces sunlight for a nearby kelp bed.