Stormy water
Posted on | November 21, 2009 | 1 Comment
After the Los Angeles Board of Public Works delayed its decision on the Low Impact Development ordinance designed to curb the flow of contaminated stormwater into the Santa Monica and San Pedro Bays, city’s Bureau of Sanitation has announced a new community meeting to “provide input” into the proposed ordinance. When: Tuesday, December 1, 2009, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm. Where: City of Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation Media Technical Center, 2714 Media Center Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90065. Who: Los Angeles homeowners, developers, environmental groups and all interested parties are encouraged to attend. Please direct questions and your RSVP to lastormwater@lacity.org. For upcoming LID-related posts go to: Team Effort blog.
Tags: chance of rain > Emily Green > Los Angeles Stormwater Program > Low Impact Development Ordinance
The Dry Garden: On sage and size
Posted on | November 20, 2009 | No Comments
Sonoma sage. Photo: Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times
MANY gardens go without sage in California but at the cost of soul. Sage is to the West what lavender is to France.
Sage, or in botanical terms salvia, has it all: Its pungent aromas contain the signature scent of the Western chaparral. The silvers, grays and greens of its foliage anchor the local Craftsman color wheel, and the long-running show of flowers come in a spectrum of white to pink to mauve to scarlet to purple to indigo to sky blue.
Many sages have long had medicinal and culinary applications, but for modern Californians it’s a balm to the eyes. A felt-like quality to the foliage, combined with a loose-branching habit, allows sage to diffuse the harshest midday sunshine rather than reflect it. Sages do not need fertilizer, and in fact they shrivel at the suggestion. Few other plants attract more pollinators to the garden. But one attribute above all of these should make sage not just an emblem of our past, but also a powerhouse plant of our future: Western and Mediterranean sages need little water.
To keep reading this week’s Dry Garden column in the Los Angeles Times, click here.
‘Oddball’ crocs
Posted on | November 20, 2009 | No Comments
From National Geographic: Built to move on land, DuckCroc may have been quick-witted, as well as quick on its feet. Scans of DuckCroc's brain shows it surrounded by air pockets — signs that it was a turbocharged organ in need of cooling. DogCroc also shared similar characteristics. You might call them the corvettes of crocodiles. But DuckCroc had an even bigger fore brain that was connected to a very specialized nose - perhaps something like a duck-billed platypus.
Amphibian lovers, set your TiVos. National Geographic is set to unveil a new group of “oddball” crocs at 9pm, Saturday November 21st in “When Crocs Ate Dinosaurs.”
“There’s an entire croc world brewing in Africa that we really had only an inkling about before,” Paul Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago, told National Geographic News. “We knew about SuperCroc, the titan of all crocs, but we didn’t have quite an idea of what existed in the shadows,” he said. According to the report, now they have found three new species nicknamed PancakeCroc, BoarCroc and RatCroc and new skeletons of DuckCroc and DogCroc. “We have crocs here that ate plants and galloped and ate dinosaurs and were flat as a board,” Sereno told National Geographic News.
For a photo gallery of the crocs, click here.
The big squat
Posted on | November 19, 2009 | No Comments
Today is … World Toilet Day. The theme: “The Big Squat.” For one minute at noon, networks of clean water activists around the world will be squatting to draw attention to the need of the estimated 2.5bn people, or 40% of the world’s population, living without adequate sanitation. For more information on an important message behind a silly minute, click here. Via WaterWired.
‘Urban Coast,’ Vol. 1, No. 1
Posted on | November 18, 2009 | No Comments
Urban Coast, the new journal from the Center for Santa Monica Bay Studies, launches today with offerings by Congressman Henry Waxman and California state senator Fran Pavley on global warming, an article on potable water vs the merely wet kind, case studies from the Santa Monica Mountains and Topanga and more. To see the inaugural issue, click here.
Via Melina Watts at the Malibu Creek Watershed Council.
Tags: Center for Santa Monica Bay Studies > chance of rain > journals > Urban Coast
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