Foothill outdoor watering ban
Customers of Pasadena Water & Power and the eight water agencies that make up the Foothill Municipal Water District are being asked to cease all outdoor water use from March 18 through 28 while the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California does seismic work on its Weymouth Treatment Plant in LaVerne. During the work, Metropolitan will stop all water deliveries to Pasadena and neighboring foothill cities. The Pasadena Garden Club is marking the occasion by asking me to speak at its meeting on March 22nd. At a guess, my message that we should drastically cut outdoor irrigation year-round in an effort to save energy used to convey water, eliminate contaminated sprinkler run-off into the Pacific and relax pressure on the Colorado River and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta will be about as popular as a bartender prescribing a 12-step program.
Meanwhile, these photos, taken last weekend at the Water Conservation California Friendly …
Owsley & him
Poster by Owsley for a 1966 Grateful Dead concert in LA's Harmonica Store. Source: Owsley's website. Click on the poster to be taken to thebear.org
Back in the day, journalist Charlie Perry lived in a rooming house in Berkeley. That is where his 1982 Rolling Stone story Owsley & Me* opens with the arrival of a new tenant: “… we were fortunate to live in a house where everybody turned on,” he wrote. “Just how fortunate, we realized in January, 1964, when somebody moved out and all sorts of pensioners and bag ladies started answering the room for rent sign. Suddenly it looked as if our mellow scene was doomed, so when this guy in his late twenties checked out the room and started talking drugs within three minutes, we begged him to move in. Forty-five minutes later, when he hadn’t stopped talking about drugs, we weren’t so sure …
A message from Jonathan Parfrey
Images: NASA Earth Observatory. Click on the images to be taken to a series of satellite photos of the tsunami and resulting fires.
Green LA Coalition Steering Committee Member Jonathan Parfrey just posted a memorandum to the environmental community about the nuclear disaster in Japan. “Last Friday’s earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan was a tragic reminder of the earth’s destructive power,” he wrote. “The death toll is expected to be in the tens of thousands. What is occurring, however, at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is no natural disaster, but a human-made one …” To keep reading Parfrey’s memorandum, click here. In addition to being on the Steering Committee of the Green LA Coalition, Parfrey is a commissioner of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. He has also served with the League of Conservation Voters, as director of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles and on …
Rain barrels
“Thanks to relentless marketing, rain barrels are enjoying a potent dose of moral buzz that is fast turning them into a 21st century version of the Great Tulip Mania,” writes Owen Dell.
To see what else the author of “Sustainable Landscaping for Dummies” has to say about saving our water supply 55 gallons at a time, click here.…
The Dry Garden: Boxy
Natalie Saavedra (3rd grader) at San Jose-Edison Academy School Garden in Covina, CA. Photo: Emily Green
Most people, save Atlantic magazine’s resident contrarian Caitlin Flanagan, agree that school gardens are a good thing. They encourage experimentation, critical thinking and healthful eating. Done right, they raise parental participation in schools. At their best, they’re as cute as a third-grader grubbing for worms.
Too often, however, teachers are defeated from the outset by the burden of installing and then maintaining a garden in addition to a classroom.
Click here to keep reading about a workable new model for schools in “The Dry Garden” in the Los Angeles Times.…
« go back — keep looking »North American Native Plant Societies
After the lawn
Garden blogs
