The week that was, 10/18-24/2009

From LA Sketchbook: Singing in the Main, LA Observed, October 20, 2009. Image courtesy of the artist. For more of Steve Greenberg's cartoons, click on the geyser.

The bill does not authorize a long-envisioned canal to move water around the delta southward. But … — “State water hearings to start next week,” Fresno Bee, October 24, 2009

The state would be required to reduce per-capita urban water use by 20% by 2020, but … — “State water hearings to start next week,” Fresno Bee, October 24, 2009, both Bee mentions via Aquafornia

“… that very well may have been a statistical blip.” — Joe Ramallo, Department of Water and Power spokesman on 44 major leaks in the month of September, “Three more water mains rupture in Los Angeles,” LA Times, October 21, 2009

“It’s a serious problem, don’t get me wrong, but it’s been

Rambling LA: From fire, flowers

Detail from the cover of "California's Fading Wildflowers" by Richard A. Minnich, UC Press. For more information, click on the hillsides.

By Ilsa Setziol

“WE GET excited after fires,” admits Ileene Anderson, a Los Angeles-based public lands director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “In the chaparral in Southern California, fires burn down all that thick impenetrable shrubbiness. With that over-story cleared out, it allows for terrific blooms of annuals or short-lived perennials that only show up after fires.”

Western datebook: Chance of plants


IF YOU MISSED THE Theodore Payne Foundation’s plant sale earlier this month, or couldn’t face the 5 Freeway to get out to Sun Valley, no worry. Phone the Foundation, tell them what you want, and pick it up from TPF’s Sunday stall at the Hollywood Farmers Market.

Elsewhere around Southern California, native plant sales are in full swing.

October 24: California Native Plant Society, Orange County Chapter, San Juan Capistrano

October 24: California Native Plant Sale, El Dorado Nature Center, Long Beach

November 7: Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, Claremont

Click here for listings of dry garden events through December. If you have an event that you would like listed, please e-mail me at: emily.green [@] mac.com


Western datebook: Chance of food

Urban farmers. Most garden tours happen in the spring, but the Los Angeles Community Gardening Council is staging a two day event this weekend with workshops and garden tours. It starts downtown at FarmLab, then wends all over town. For information, click on the kiwi.

Image of the day: Beautiful Blighty

IT’S not surprising that more than half of the winning images in the Guardian newspaper’s UK-wide landscape photography competition involved water. Another name for the place is the British Isles. What is striking is a creeping urban edge in a normally pastoral style of photography. While the winner featuring sunrise over the Isle of Skye was a lyrical ideal, this image by John Parminter, “Food for thought,” finds beauty and horror in its image of an abandoned shopping cart in the harbor of Aberdeen in northeastern Scotland.

For the full series, click here. The images will be on exhibit at London’s National Theatre after December 5th.

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