The Dry Garden: After the storm
Posted on | December 3, 2011 | 2 Comments
After the storm, we have no coroners, no priests for big trees. There will no autopsies, no last rites for the shredded jacaranda and more than 50 damaged trees at the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden in Arcadia, the fallen oaks of Fair Oaks Avenue or mangled magnolia trees of Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena. Ceremony, if it can be called that, will involve gas-fired buzz saws and insurance adjusters.
So how do we mark what happened? For that matter, what did happen? And what, ultimately, will we make of the night the trees fell?
Click here to keep reading in the Los Angeles Times about the massive tree losses across the Los Angeles foothills during record winds last Wednesday night.
Giving thanks for wattle
Posted on | November 18, 2011 | No Comments
My hand aches. My back aches. There is no end of aching in sight. What a wonderful year. As Thanksgiving approaches, gratitude runs deep. I am thankful for a remarkably generous rain year, for California poppies, for sunflowers, local horse-stable manure so good that the guy who composts it calls it “craptonite,” for the bare-root plum tree that turned out to be a quince, for lemon-soaked quince wedges in stir fries, for the inventor of ibuprofen. This year, above all, I’m thankful for the things that I used to throw away.
Click here to keep reading in this week’s LA Times Dry Garden column about the wonders of salvaged wood, perfect for making wattle fences. 
Mr Villaraigosa, rip out that lawn
Posted on | November 16, 2011 | 2 Comments
Occupy LA sign on tree, LA City Hall, October, 2011. No nails used. Photo: Emily Green
Whatever the accomplishments of Occupy L.A. when it finally decamps — or gets evicted — from around City Hall, one positive achievement is already clear: It has killed the lawn.
The Times’ editorial board has harrumphed about the taxpayer expense of replacing one of downtown’s “rare green spaces,” and it worries that the “majestic figs” are at risk. Last week, the Department of Recreation and Parks sent an aggrieved letter to the mayor about signs nailed to trees, broken sprinkler heads and compacted soil. The nails and compacted soil are unfortunate. But really, Rec and Parks is missing the point. Occupy L.A. has given City Hall the chance to walk its talk.
Click here to keep reading my call for climate-appropriate landscaping around LA City Hall in the op-ed pages of the Los Angeles Times. If bile is your cup of tea, do proceed to the comments.
Cheer up. We may die
Posted on | November 15, 2011 | No Comments
“The globe experienced its eighth warmest October since record keeping began in 1880,” reported the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration today. “Arctic sea ice extent was the second smallest extent on record for October at 23.5 percent below average. Additionally, La Niña conditions strengthened during October 2011. According to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, La Niña is expected to continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter.” To keep reading, click here.
For those of you who missed Bettina Boxall’s characteristically vivid reporting for the Los Angeles Times on the seldom noted dark twin of Southern California water consumption — the vast energy suck required to pump water here from the Colorado River and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta — click here.
The Dry Garden: A shear education
Posted on | November 11, 2011 | No Comments
One of the first things that I wanted to do in my new garden last year was to cut down the persimmon tree at the center of the large backyard. As early rains stripped the last of the leaves from its limbs and crows pecked at a few fruit, it looked less like a tree and more like an accident scene. Had the person who pruned its tangle of stumped and crossed limbs been a maniac? A gaping crack where the main branches met the trunk looked like it had been smote from heaven.
Only catching sight of its last fall leaves at twilight stopped me. A year later, restoring that wounded tree has become one of my passions. After scant fruit last year, this fall the tree — perhaps 10 feet tall and 12 feet wide — has produced so much fruit that I’ve called in friends and told them to bring crates. Tending it has amounted to an education.
Click here to keep reading about how to work with persimmon wood for a tree that lends glory and crazy amounts of fruit to autumn in the California garden.
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