Impressions from England
In pursuing water-wise landscaping, modern Los Angeles has much to learn from the ancient English towns built around rivers.“American Canopy” on the past of U.S. forests
Eric Rutkow has written a fine history on the rapacious chewing up of American forests and subsequent rise of a faltering culture of forestry management.Pulsing jewels: Edward St Aubyn’s ‘At Last’
First, what a lovely painting of roses by British surgeon and artist Sir Roy Calne decorates the dust jacket of Edward St Aubyn’s new novel “At Last.”
Second, what fine filling there is between the covers.
Others have written about the desolation, wit and clawed progress toward hope that makes the final installment of St Aubyn’s “Melrose novels” proof, as if proof were needed, that high-end English ennui is not dead, not embalmed and sole territory for the period costume department of the BBC. “At Last” was so powerfully admired by New Yorker critic James Wood that his review amounted to placing an encyclopedia on a daisy. What I haven’t seen remarked on, which is not to say that it hasn’t been noticed — even all over the place, is that the core of St Aubyn’s solace in this strange and beautiful book isn’t in the wit of …
Rivers of color
It's easy to miss the mosaic work around the rear stairwell leading from the parking lot to Vroman's bookstore in Pasadena, but that makes it all the more thrilling when a sudden mix of rain and milky winter light illuminate their spirit.Three deserts and the fourth estate
Perusing a new water book in Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena last June, I found myself reading various passages (sample above) that were strikingly similar to descriptions from a series that I reported and wrote for the Las Vegas Sun in 2008. There was no right response and there were plenty of wrong ones. The story of which wrong ones I chose, along with some notes on intellectual property law as it applies to a steadily vanishing population of original reporters, is in today's Los Angeles Review of Books. Click on the comparison copy and maps to be taken to LARB. Map source: US Geological Survey.
…
« go back — keep looking »North American Native Plant Societies
After the lawn
Garden blogs
