The week that was, 7/6-12/2009
“El Nino arrives.” Click on the map of sea surface temperature anomalies to be taken to the July 9 announcement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
”If I was a water manager in southern Utah, I’d be paying attention.” Larry Dunn, meteorologist-in-charge at the National Weather Service’s Salt Lake City office on the prospect of an El Nino. Salt Lake Tribune
“A Christmas gift in July?” The Redding Record Searchlight on the prospect of an El Nino, via Aquafornia
“If next year is average or below average in water, we’ll have very serious problems.” Lester Snow, director of the California Department of Water Resources, Wall Street Journal via Aquafornia…
Barrel cactuses admired
Photo: Debra Lee Baldwin via the Los Angeles Times. Click on the cactus to be taken to Baldwin's article.
THE MOST stylish advocate of succulents, Debra Lee Baldwin, turns her eye to barrel cactuses in this week’s Los Angeles Times Home Section. To read, (do read), click here.…
Why the crisis at Santa Barbara Botanic Garden affects all Californians
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. Photo: Marilee Kuhlmann
FOR THOSE who missed it, last weekend the LA Times followed up on the troubles at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. A very capable round up it was too. Yet, roughly three months since crisis gripped one of California’s most important botanic gardens, there remains a great unsaid. That is: As a matter of urgency, the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden must reinstate Carol Bornstein.
The April decision to dismiss the former director of horticulture, a 28-year veteran of the garden, is described as a matter of cost efficiency. But if the garden can afford a highly paid PR to gloss over the crisis that has driven half of its volunteers from service, then there is no conceivable rationale for sacking a woman who is the living embodiment of the garden’s mission to foster stewardship of the natural world through inspired learning, rigorous scholarship, …
Drink from the sink
THE TITLE of a Government Accountability Office report “Bottled Water: FDA Safety and Consumer Protections Are Often Less Stringent Than Comparable EPA Protections for Tap Water” released yesterday underscores what inside water people have said for years: forget bottled water, drink from the sink.
From the Associated Press via the Denver Post today, “The GAO and the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, recommend in reports released Wednesday that bottled water be labeled with the same level of information municipal water providers must disclose. The researchers urged Americans to make bottled water ‘a distant second choice’ behind filtered tap water because there isn’t enough information about bottled water. But the working group recommends purifying tap water with a commercial filter.”…
Sober from lawn
KILLING grass is relatively easy. Don’t water it. However, creating a beautiful, low-maintenance garden in its stead is the hard part. Help is at hand. From a large selection of dry gardening courses offered this summer, the theme that dominates is how to transition from lawn to a drought tolerant garden, one step at a time.
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North American Native Plant Societies
After the lawn
Garden blogs
