Western datebook: “There it is. Take it.”
In a December article for Chance of Rain, Southern California irrigation specialist Bob Galbreath recalled the arrival of Owens Lake water in Los Angeles from the Eastern Sierra and William Mulholland’s 1913 exhortation, “There it is. Take it!”
Take it we did — with such abandon that a century later our water supply is on the verge of exhaustion. Galbreath, who for two decades has preached abstemiousness in the form of drip irrigation over sprinklers, concluded the article by musing, “Perhaps it would help if I put out a big pile of drip tubing at my next seminar and said: ‘There it is. Take it!'”
Perhaps indeed. To see if he does, go to his talk on January 7th at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, where he is the first guest of the new year in …
North American Native Plant Societies
After the lawn
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