And May brings… rain
Late spring rain forecast for Los Angeles, CA for May 17-18, 2011The Dry Garden: Old tiers, new layout
Don't understand the water price tier system of the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power? Cheer up. Neither does the department's graphic artist. The tier shown on this dummy bill created to promote the new bill is wrong. If I understand it, and I'm not sure that I do, a Tier 1 allotment for a hot climate area would be 24 HCFs/mo or higher. It's still a better-looking bill that makes water use more clear. The real shame is that the prices are so low, too low to discourage pools and lawns or to raise enough money to step up replacement of aging city water mains. Click on the image above to be taken to this week's Dry Garden column in the Los Angeles Times, which looks at the bill.
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The Dry Garden: An orchardist among us
When musicians Kazi Pitelka and John Steinmetz tell friends that they are leaving their Altadena home of 15 years, the invariable responses are: “Why?” “Do you have to?” “Whyyyyy?”
It’s not that their friends are given to whining. It’s that few homes will ever be occupied so well. Theirs is a place where music was made, children were raised, a father died. Where mealtime meant family time and where Pitelka gardened, then cooked.
Click here to keep reading in the Los Angeles Times about the garden where Kazi Pitelka amassed 75 fruit trees, many herbs, chickens, vegetables and summer berries, and, in the process, became one of the best kitchen gardeners in the state.…
High good, low bad: Mead in April 2011
Last week at a meeting of the Southern California Water Dialogue, Reclamation had good news and bad news. The good news was that as tallies keep coming in from a record water year on the Colorado River, the looming prospect of shortage declarations for the “Lower Basin” has receded. (By last night, the closing April elevation of Lake Mead was 1,095.77 feet, more than 13 feet higher than November 2010, when the largest reservoir in the American West was within 7 feet of shortages being declared.)
The bad news was that Mead, which serves Nevada, California, Arizona and Mexico, is still less than half full. As this graphic shows, when a dry trend began on the river in 1999, Mead was 95% full. While we’ve had a wet blip in 2011, if this generally dry trend persists for …
The Dry Garden: Stop saws, save birds
Text If there’s a tough instruction to follow in spring, it’s to relax. Don’t trim your trees, hedges or shrubs. Don’t paint the house. Greet sunshine by sitting back. The lazier you are, the more likely you are to hear the telltale cheep-cheep-cheep of baby birds, because spring is the high point of bird nesting season.
Text I say “high point” because California has a long nesting season. Hummingbirds have been broody since January and will remain so for some time. Think of them when you tell your gardener to leave the hedges, camellias and hibiscuses alone. Bushtits, swallows, wrens, woodpeckers, phoebes and finches are either sitting on eggs or constructing nests. Think of them, then put off termite work, gutter repair and tree thinning. The best months for tree work are August through December.
Click here to keep reading “The Dry Garden” in the Los Angeles Times.…
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