The Dry Garden: armed for conservation

If there’s one thing harder to get than a good garden hose, it’s a good nozzle to fit on it. Now that we’re in a drought, good nozzles we need. After testing 10, two leaked from the start and one exploded. The Dramm Revolver (above, in purple) performed best. Shopping for them offered an experience that felt more like going to a gun show than a garden center. For the full LA Times story, click on the image, which is by LA Times photographer Kirk McKoy.

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Drought to persist or intensify

California is red on the most recent edition of the US Seasonal Drought Outlook, along with western Nevada, south Texas, Louisiana, central Oklahoma, central Washington, pockets of northern Montana and western faces of the Hawaiian islands.

 

Source: National Weather Service. To link to the US Seasonal Drought Outlook webpage, click on the map image.

 

To be taken to the Weekly Drought Monitor website, click on image.

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July dry gardening events

WE CAN change the world … by treating it sensibly and artfully. What’s more, for Western gardeners, it’s fun. Click here for a full calendar of dry gardening events around Southern California. If you like the look of the Epilobium californica pictured below and blooming now in native gardens across the region with scarcely a drop of water, don’t miss Lili Singer’s “Look Ma, no lawn!” courses for the Theodore Payne Foundation. 

Epilobium californica. Photo: Native Sons. Click on photo for link to Native Sons nursery

Lili Singer of the Theodore Payne Foundation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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High good, low bad: Mead in June

NASA image of the Colorado River Delta in the Gulf of California. Click on image for NASA history of the image and the region.

LAKE MEAD is the Colorado River reservoir holding key water supplies for California, Arizona, Nevada and the Republic of Mexico. The remnants of what was once a vast watershed concluding in the Gulf of California now depend on releases of water from Mead.

Yet will there be water to release? The level of the lake has dropped nearly 32 feet in the last six years. If it drops another 20, and the elevation is at or below 1,075 on January 1st,  Mexico, Arizona and Nevada will face punishing cuts in their allocations. Essential preserves for wildlife will be subject to ever more desperate schemes promoted by the driest states, including “non-water solutions” for fish habitat.* The Southern Nevada Water Authority has given the 1,075
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Officially dry

LOS ANGELES is poised today to record its fourth year in a row with below normal rainfall, reports the Los Angeles Times. From July 1 of last year to June 30—the period designated the “rain year”—only about 9 inches fell, compared with the average of just over 15 inches. 

For the full story, click here.…

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