The Sultan of Searchlight
News reports had fun with the Senate Majority Leader’s sniffled remark that the debt ceiling drama was keeping him from his garden, but Jon Stewart had more fun. It was hard on everyone, Stewart said, but especially hard on senior citizens, one senior citizen particularly. Cue: news footage of Harry Reid.
“I have a home in Nevada that I haven’t seen in months,” said Reid. “My pomegranate trees are, I’m told, blossoming and have pomegranates on them. I have some fig trees and roses that I just haven’t seen.” To this, after a Daily Show-sized pause, an incredulous Stewart responded, “Your pomegranate and fig trees are blooming? What are you? The Sultan of Reno?”
Adopting a faintly British accent to inhabit said sultan, Stewart continued, “Sometimes the mists of eucalyptus would settle over my fields of pistachios. My harem would prepare me a plate of candied dates and polish …
High good, low bad: Mead in July 2011
Why, you might wonder, would anyone in their right mind use a map highlighting the Mississippi River system for a monthly post about the elevation of the largest reservoir on the Colorado River? The reason is a renewed offer on the table from Las Vegas water manager Pat Mulroy. Divert the Mississippi and its tributaries to feed upper basin Colorado River users, give Vegas the water therefore left in the Colorado River system and she’ll leave the Great Basin aquifer alone. “The instate project wouldn’t be needed because at that point what you’ve done is securitize the Colorado River,” she tells a reporter for “Vegas, Inc.”
This transcontinental flood control scheme isn’t new. Pat’s been braving ribald mockery over it for at least three years now. The “give me more Colorado River water or the Great Basin desert gets it” line isn’t new either — that’s been a …
The Dry Garden: Vertical meadow
Jasmine Hawes and mother Ginny Hawes (background) kindly posed for scale in this summer's towering sunflower garden, planted as part of a conversion from lawn to a water efficient native garden.
There’s overdoing it, and there’s what I did. After sowing a pound of sunflower seeds last winter, eight months later, the phrase “height of summer” can now be taken literally. In lieu of a front hedge, I have sunflowers. One astounded woman even came to my door asking when and how to plant them. Neighbors call my home “the sunflower house.” Out back, my yard is a vertical meadow.
Click here to keep reading “The Dry Garden” in the Los Angeles Times on how wildflowers can serve as a succession crop when replacing lawn.
Click here to see what’s doing at the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wildflowers and Native Plants, and here for our regional treasure, the Rancho …
The Dry Garden: Summer dormancy
Emily Green, that would be me, is on vacation (read thinning the persimmon tree so the wood doesn’t give way under the weight of a bumper crop), but click here for ten LA Times Dry Garden columns about what to do while a garden enters summer dormancy.…
The Dry Garden: North East Trees
Unless you are active in the field of urban greening, you probably haven’t heard of North East Trees. Unlike the better known TreePeople, North East Trees has not seen its founder land on “The Tonight Show.” Rather, the nonprofit that Scott Wilson started in 1989 by planting 700 oaks at Occidental College in Los Angeles’ community of Eagle Rock has quietly been planting many more trees (50,000 at last count), working with low-income communities to create parks, and partnering with city and county agencies on water-harvesting projects. North East Trees has been at the cutting edge of L.A.’s ecological makeover.
Click here to keep reading about North East Trees in this week’s Dry Garden column in the Los Angeles Times.…
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