Bob, Ted, Leavenworth and Bavaria
Posted on | February 25, 2015 | 2 Comments
In 1960 Bob Rodgers and Ted Price opened a Bavarian-themed cafe in the depressed logging town of Leavenworth in central Washington. A decade later, residents were dancing around maypoles. Prompted by Rodgers and Price, Leavenworth became an Alpine-style resort so popular that it received an “All America City” award and was featured in Look magazine. Yesterday Rodgers’ niece, Arlene Collins, phoned to say that Price died on February 19th in Vancouver, Washington. Her uncle had died “just about exactly a year earlier.” So, if heaven exists, it’s a safe guess that it’s about to be redecorated. Here’s to the men who once wrote me a tongue-in-cheek note that began, “Thank you for outing us on the front page of the Los Angeles Times.” And here is the 2003 LAT piece that prompted the note from the World War II veterans who braved American lumberjack country and decided that a good new look would be lederhosen. Photo: Rodgers and Price/Leavenworthhistory.com
Proposition 1 analyzed for voters
Posted on | October 23, 2014 | No Comments
Californians, whether you love, hate, or have heretofore been unaware of Proposition 1, a measure on the pending November 4 ballot that would raise $7.12 billion in public money for water projects, here is the best-considered and most impartial breakdown that you are likely to find. Everyone who reads the Pacific Institute’s Prop 1 summary or report itself is likely to have at least one takeaway line.
Mine is: “water conservation and efficiency efforts would be allocated a mere 1%.”
Tags: chance of rain > Emily Green > Pacific Institute > Proposition 1
Fourth year in the garden
Posted on | October 17, 2014 | No Comments
Helianthus annuus flowers. Bees, finches and squirrels will keep visiting even cut flowers — if you leave them outside — for nectar and seed heads.
When I remarked to a neighbor that a group from the Los Angeles County Arboretum was coming this week to tour my garden the response was: “Why?”
Bragging never ends well.
That said, it’s as good a time as any to link to this photo essay of the fourth year in the garden.
Starve the lawn, not the tree
Posted on | October 1, 2014 | 3 Comments
Photos: University of California Tree Failure Report Program
It’s encouraging to see residents of greater Los Angeles cutting back on lawn irrigation and/or switching to less thirsty ground-covers. But there has been an unintended consequence. Civic-minded homeowners have been under-watering — or not watering — their trees. While deciduous trees register the stress palpably enough that many homeowners are alerted to the need to irrigate, most evergreens can’t wilt. Rather, their leaves furl and their needles droop. Formerly turgid and healthy limbs become brittle and vulnerable to boring insects and the diseases that the bugs too often carry. Stress a big tree enough and it becomes prone to what monitors of our urban canopies call “tree failure” (an interesting term for an outcome that is almost never the tree’s fault, but that of those managing it). A treeless Los Angeles would be a harsh, hot and bleak place. To prevent that from happening the Urban Forest Council has issued this brochure. Click here for more about common causes of tree failure, and here, here and here for an excellent three-part guide to planting trees from horticulturist and Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden fellow Barbara Eisenstein.
Tags: Barbara Eisenstein > chance of rain > tree failure > Urban Forest Council
Joke shaming water wasters works
Posted on | July 30, 2014 | 1 Comment
“A lot of suburban water planners plan for yesterday,” says Eric Kuhn, general manager of the Colorado River Water District. But in Denver the national baby boomer vogue for suburban “ranchettes” with water-sucking lawns so big that you need a tractor to mow them is giving way to a millennial preference for downtown living in condos and lofts. SUVs are out, light rail, car and bike shares are in. And when it comes to water policy, Denver is behaving in a way that makes the future seem not only tenable but even bright.
Click here to keep reading in the Guardian’s Live Better Challenge about how Denver Water dealt with the potentially devastating loss of a massive dam project. It turned to conservation and a lot of jokes.
Tags: chance of rain > Denver Water > Emily Green > Guardian
North American Native Plant Societies
After the lawn
Garden blogs
