See BadMom's complete blog post about it here.
She writes in part, I've started the Madison School CSA blog for all things related to the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. Visit there to learn the latest news about the program. Beginning September 24, Tanaka Farms will deliver every Thursday to Neighborhood Grinds.
I participated in the CSA last year and over the summer and had some great produce in my fridge as a result.
2009-09-18
2009-09-15
You say Zauschneria I say Epilobium
There's a nice article on California fuschias over at the SF Chronicle.
It seems more botanical than most general interest newspaper articles.
California fuchsias are not true fuchsias, although they are also members of the evening primrose family. The name Zauschneria (named after a Professor Zauschner of Prague) is used in older books for a handful of California species with trumpet-shaped red flowers and green to furry gray foliage.
The Munz and Keck book "California Flora," published in 1959, recognized Z. cana from the Central and Southern California coasts, septentrionale from Humboldt and Mendocino counties, garrettii from the Mojave Desert and californica from much of the rest of the state.
Then in 1976, Peter Raven, renowned conservation advocate and evening primrose specialist, proposed combining Zauschneria with the fireweeds and willow-herbs in the larger genus Epilobium. Although the plants don't look much alike, Raven found similarities in their hairy seed coats and other features.
Botanists have generally accepted the change, although some are still cranky about it. Despite that snarl of consonants in the middle of "zauschneria," we were used to it.
Somewhere along the way, californica and garrettii merged into cana, and the species' genders changed to conform with the new genus. That leaves Epilobium canum and E. septentrionale as the last California fuchsias standing.
Read the whole thing at link.
It seems more botanical than most general interest newspaper articles.
California fuchsias are not true fuchsias, although they are also members of the evening primrose family. The name Zauschneria (named after a Professor Zauschner of Prague) is used in older books for a handful of California species with trumpet-shaped red flowers and green to furry gray foliage.
The Munz and Keck book "California Flora," published in 1959, recognized Z. cana from the Central and Southern California coasts, septentrionale from Humboldt and Mendocino counties, garrettii from the Mojave Desert and californica from much of the rest of the state.
Then in 1976, Peter Raven, renowned conservation advocate and evening primrose specialist, proposed combining Zauschneria with the fireweeds and willow-herbs in the larger genus Epilobium. Although the plants don't look much alike, Raven found similarities in their hairy seed coats and other features.
Botanists have generally accepted the change, although some are still cranky about it. Despite that snarl of consonants in the middle of "zauschneria," we were used to it.
Somewhere along the way, californica and garrettii merged into cana, and the species' genders changed to conform with the new genus. That leaves Epilobium canum and E. septentrionale as the last California fuchsias standing.
Read the whole thing at link.
2009-09-14
Huntington Beach native plants
I was previously unaware of the Shipley Nature Center. A friend referred me to it today on email.
Shipley Nature Center is an 18-acre natural area located in Huntington Beach, California. Situated within Huntington Central Park, the nature center is not only a sanctuary for the local wildlife, but it is also a haven for the residents and visitors of Orange County.
Our hours of operation are Monday-Saturday from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM. We invite you to visit us and experience the beauty of nature.
http://shipleynature.org/index.html
Shipley Nature Center is an 18-acre natural area located in Huntington Beach, California. Situated within Huntington Central Park, the nature center is not only a sanctuary for the local wildlife, but it is also a haven for the residents and visitors of Orange County.
Our hours of operation are Monday-Saturday from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM. We invite you to visit us and experience the beauty of nature.
http://shipleynature.org/index.html
2009-09-09
Our forgotten landscape: California prairie
Here's an interesting take on California's grasslands, which appear to not be quite so grassy as the name would lead you to believe. Since I live one block from a street named "Prairie" and have seen historic photos of the nearby prairie, this has particular interest to me.
This is copied in its entirety from the Daily Democrat. The author refers us to www.tuleyome.org for additional information, so I'll be browsing around there looking for some more interesting articles.
Our forgotten landscape: California prairie
By GLEN HOLSTEIN
Created: 09/06/2009 02:30:42 AM PDT
John Muir, California's greatest naturalist, taught America and the world to love and preserve nature rather than use it up. Muir arrived in San Francisco in the spring of 1868 and walked south through the Coast Range.
At Pacheco Pass he descended to the then unplowed Central Valley. He found "one ... bed of [flowers], so marvelously rich that, in walking... 400 miles, your foot would press a hundred flowers at every step. "Here it is not as in our great western prairie, flowers sprinkled in grass, but grass in the flowers."
Muir was the first to well describe the pristine Great Valley's flowers but from early Spanish explorers to G. C. Merrifield in 1851 to the great California botanist Willis Lynn Jepson in 1925 others have told of once vast flower prairies in California's valleys. Many such accounts are compiled in Professor Richard Minnich's recent UC Press book California's Fading Wildflowers.
Muir often elegantly described the rapid loss of California's unique flower prairies, but they are far from all gone. Each spring the valley much as Muir saw it is present at Yolo County's Glide Tule Ranch as well as many other places.
Why then do many call places like the Tule Ranch "grasslands" when those seeing them first report few if any native grasses? Therein lies a tale.
Taxonomic botany straightforwardly describes (in Latin) new plants wherever they're found, but more theoretical plant ecology started in eastern colleges and then moved west to
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California. But the east is not like California. Its forests stretch continuously from Florida to Quebec except where people cleared them. Farther west in the drier Great Plains grassland is similarly nearly continuous from Mexico to Saskatchewan. But in California it's just a few steps from dark redwood forests to open prairies and Napa County has greater vegetational diversity than most eastern states.
There's a simple reason for this difference. In the east it rains when it's warm and plants grow fast, but in California it doesn't. Rain here falls when it's too cold to grow so it's stored until temperatures rise. Consequently soil where it's stored determines vegetation much more in California than in the east.
Water and air deeply penetrate sandy and rocky soils where plants with deep roots like shrubs and trees can reach them. Clay soils, in contrast, favor the shallower roots of herbs because they keep water near surfaces and exclude air.
Since water carries clay farther than sand and rocks, California valleys usually have more clay and thus prairie vegetation, but places streams carry sand and gravel into valleys like along Yolo County's Buckeye Creek have trees even where water is scarce.
Eastern plant ecologists used to continuous vegetation in absence of disturbance expected it also in California. Minnesota's W. S. Cooper thought this was chaparral and claimed it once covered the Central Valley. More influential was Frederick Clements of Nebraska's theory it was covered with a bunchgrass now called purple needlegrass. Clements made and believed grand theories.
In 1997 Jason Hamilton showed Clements' bunchgrass theory came from expectations about California derived from his Nebraska experience. Evidence for it was minimal and came from atypical valley places like Jepson Prairie, where moist sea breezes bring many coastal plants inland, and Fresno, where Kings Canyon glacial outwash carried much sand to the valley floor.
Clements and followers like L. Burcham and H. Heady popularized a legend that the Great Valley was a bunchgrass sea wiped out by grazing and drought in the 1860's and replaced by non-native annual grasses.
The legend's ultimate popularization came with calling the valley "grassland" in Munz & Keck's A California Flora, the source for plant identification from 1959 to 1993 before the new Jepson Manual replaced it.
Why not the legend? It's false for one thing. Muir, Merrifield and others in early California vouch for that. Secondly, so-called "native grass restoration," planting coast and foothill needlegrass in valleys where it's not native, wastes much time and money.
Cattle ranches mostly well use and protect prairies, but when sold for development planners almost universally call their vegetation "non-native grassland," which ignores native wildflowers (forbs) and privileges weeds. Consequently California Prairie, the name Burcham used clear back in 1957, was the only major California plant community systematically excluded from general plan conservation elements until recently.
Since calling prairie "non-native grassland" made it defenseless by emphasizing its weeds rather than its native forbs, it became the ideal place for planners to direct sprawl. It is as if riparian areas were called "Giant reed-saltcedar thickets." To protect something it must be named. That name is California Prairie.
-- Dr. Glen Holstein is a member of the Board of Directors of Tuleyome, as well as the Chapter Botanist for the Sacramento Valley Chapter of the California Native Plant Society. Prior Tuleyome Tales are available at www.tuleyome.org
This is copied in its entirety from the Daily Democrat. The author refers us to www.tuleyome.org for additional information, so I'll be browsing around there looking for some more interesting articles.
Our forgotten landscape: California prairie
By GLEN HOLSTEIN
Created: 09/06/2009 02:30:42 AM PDT
John Muir, California's greatest naturalist, taught America and the world to love and preserve nature rather than use it up. Muir arrived in San Francisco in the spring of 1868 and walked south through the Coast Range.
At Pacheco Pass he descended to the then unplowed Central Valley. He found "one ... bed of [flowers], so marvelously rich that, in walking... 400 miles, your foot would press a hundred flowers at every step. "Here it is not as in our great western prairie, flowers sprinkled in grass, but grass in the flowers."
Muir was the first to well describe the pristine Great Valley's flowers but from early Spanish explorers to G. C. Merrifield in 1851 to the great California botanist Willis Lynn Jepson in 1925 others have told of once vast flower prairies in California's valleys. Many such accounts are compiled in Professor Richard Minnich's recent UC Press book California's Fading Wildflowers.
Muir often elegantly described the rapid loss of California's unique flower prairies, but they are far from all gone. Each spring the valley much as Muir saw it is present at Yolo County's Glide Tule Ranch as well as many other places.
Why then do many call places like the Tule Ranch "grasslands" when those seeing them first report few if any native grasses? Therein lies a tale.
Taxonomic botany straightforwardly describes (in Latin) new plants wherever they're found, but more theoretical plant ecology started in eastern colleges and then moved west to
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California. But the east is not like California. Its forests stretch continuously from Florida to Quebec except where people cleared them. Farther west in the drier Great Plains grassland is similarly nearly continuous from Mexico to Saskatchewan. But in California it's just a few steps from dark redwood forests to open prairies and Napa County has greater vegetational diversity than most eastern states.
There's a simple reason for this difference. In the east it rains when it's warm and plants grow fast, but in California it doesn't. Rain here falls when it's too cold to grow so it's stored until temperatures rise. Consequently soil where it's stored determines vegetation much more in California than in the east.
Water and air deeply penetrate sandy and rocky soils where plants with deep roots like shrubs and trees can reach them. Clay soils, in contrast, favor the shallower roots of herbs because they keep water near surfaces and exclude air.
Since water carries clay farther than sand and rocks, California valleys usually have more clay and thus prairie vegetation, but places streams carry sand and gravel into valleys like along Yolo County's Buckeye Creek have trees even where water is scarce.
Eastern plant ecologists used to continuous vegetation in absence of disturbance expected it also in California. Minnesota's W. S. Cooper thought this was chaparral and claimed it once covered the Central Valley. More influential was Frederick Clements of Nebraska's theory it was covered with a bunchgrass now called purple needlegrass. Clements made and believed grand theories.
In 1997 Jason Hamilton showed Clements' bunchgrass theory came from expectations about California derived from his Nebraska experience. Evidence for it was minimal and came from atypical valley places like Jepson Prairie, where moist sea breezes bring many coastal plants inland, and Fresno, where Kings Canyon glacial outwash carried much sand to the valley floor.
Clements and followers like L. Burcham and H. Heady popularized a legend that the Great Valley was a bunchgrass sea wiped out by grazing and drought in the 1860's and replaced by non-native annual grasses.
The legend's ultimate popularization came with calling the valley "grassland" in Munz & Keck's A California Flora, the source for plant identification from 1959 to 1993 before the new Jepson Manual replaced it.
Why not the legend? It's false for one thing. Muir, Merrifield and others in early California vouch for that. Secondly, so-called "native grass restoration," planting coast and foothill needlegrass in valleys where it's not native, wastes much time and money.
Cattle ranches mostly well use and protect prairies, but when sold for development planners almost universally call their vegetation "non-native grassland," which ignores native wildflowers (forbs) and privileges weeds. Consequently California Prairie, the name Burcham used clear back in 1957, was the only major California plant community systematically excluded from general plan conservation elements until recently.
Since calling prairie "non-native grassland" made it defenseless by emphasizing its weeds rather than its native forbs, it became the ideal place for planners to direct sprawl. It is as if riparian areas were called "Giant reed-saltcedar thickets." To protect something it must be named. That name is California Prairie.
-- Dr. Glen Holstein is a member of the Board of Directors of Tuleyome, as well as the Chapter Botanist for the Sacramento Valley Chapter of the California Native Plant Society. Prior Tuleyome Tales are available at www.tuleyome.org
2009-09-08
Cougarmagic
From the Public Eye blog comes a link to an interesting blog featuring local fauna: http://www.cougarmagic.com/
For the prurient-minded, "Cougarmagic has nothing whatsoever to do with dressing like a skank, having big hair, a fake tan, and trying to pick up 20 year old men in bars."
For the prurient-minded, "Cougarmagic has nothing whatsoever to do with dressing like a skank, having big hair, a fake tan, and trying to pick up 20 year old men in bars."
2009-08-27
It's the soil
One raised bed was the site of my experimental Phacelia tenacetifolia cover crop / layered mulching trial. The other raised bed is much sandier and has had mulch added and dug in with no cover crop. The cover crop area is naturally much more clay-like. Water has been on the same soaker hose, though the sandier soil gets the far end of the hose and the clay soil gets the near end, if there's a difference. But look at the difference in productivity! These pumpkins were planted at around the same time with seeds from the same package.
Clay soil with cover crop wins by a huge margin!
Clay soil with cover crop wins by a huge margin!
House update III
Here's a photo-journal of my kitchen odyssey to date
Juli and Martha helped me pick colors last week. I'm not trying to make any particularly bold statements here.
Bathroom walls: MS162 Waning Moon semi-gloss
Bathroom Trim: MS043 Gray Harewood semi-gloss
Master BR walls: MS312 Diving Board eggshell (a pale blue)
Master BR trim: MS064 Chamois Cloth
Kitchen Trim and Cabinets: MS197 Cocoon semi-gloss (the nice sage green that I wanted from the get go instead of the after dinner mint green I have now)
Kitchen walls: MS138 White Calla semi-gloss. I still need one more gallon of this in a eggshell or more matte finish for use in the adjoining room.
I also purchased a sink, tile for the bathroom floor from Cal Tile in Torrance along with matched grout for the tub/shower and a sanded natural color grout for the bath floor.
Alex will be done with the bathroom and give it a final seal on Saturday.
Kevin may have primer on the walls by Saturday, so the dusty part of the job will wrap up soon.
Juli and Martha helped me pick colors last week. I'm not trying to make any particularly bold statements here.
Bathroom walls: MS162 Waning Moon semi-gloss
Bathroom Trim: MS043 Gray Harewood semi-gloss
Master BR walls: MS312 Diving Board eggshell (a pale blue)
Master BR trim: MS064 Chamois Cloth
Kitchen Trim and Cabinets: MS197 Cocoon semi-gloss (the nice sage green that I wanted from the get go instead of the after dinner mint green I have now)
Kitchen walls: MS138 White Calla semi-gloss. I still need one more gallon of this in a eggshell or more matte finish for use in the adjoining room.
I also purchased a sink, tile for the bathroom floor from Cal Tile in Torrance along with matched grout for the tub/shower and a sanded natural color grout for the bath floor.
Alex will be done with the bathroom and give it a final seal on Saturday.
Kevin may have primer on the walls by Saturday, so the dusty part of the job will wrap up soon.
2009-08-20
House update III
Things are moving along at the house. I've been taking photos regularly in order to show the transformation. However, my computer access is limited since the whole house is sheeted in plastic. Kevin's doing things that I would never imagine doing and getting them done quickly.
I selected a sheet flooring for the kitchen and asked Lowes to send an estimator over. That will happen early next week. There's some help Lowes can give me with procuring the flooring without the regular 21 day lead time. At this point they could be in to install late next week or early the following week.
I need
baseboard and molding
paint
a sink (I'll go with a ss sink with integral deck mount faucet)
counter top (inexpensive but perfectly serviceable laminate for $100)
flooring for bathroom (tile?)
Alex the tile guy is ready to go on Monday.
Oh, and I'm working 65 hours this week at my regular job and my car is in the shop until next week to the tune of ~$1600. Life isn't slow.
I selected a sheet flooring for the kitchen and asked Lowes to send an estimator over. That will happen early next week. There's some help Lowes can give me with procuring the flooring without the regular 21 day lead time. At this point they could be in to install late next week or early the following week.
I need
baseboard and molding
paint
a sink (I'll go with a ss sink with integral deck mount faucet)
counter top (inexpensive but perfectly serviceable laminate for $100)
flooring for bathroom (tile?)
Alex the tile guy is ready to go on Monday.
Oh, and I'm working 65 hours this week at my regular job and my car is in the shop until next week to the tune of ~$1600. Life isn't slow.
2009-08-17
House update II
Kevin was on the job about 7:45 this am
I have a sheet flooring selection from Lowes and will get them to install. Something like $2.50 for the sheet and $1.67 to install per square foot.
Rough electrical will complete after Kevin has framed in some of the new parts. He says Wednesday.
Alex the tile guy gave me a great price of $900 for the tub / shower. I may want to put in floor tile as well, but my preferred floor tile is rough. I'm concerned about trapping dirt in the tiles. Check Cal Tile Center, 5108 W. 190th Street Torrance, CA 90503 Tel. 310-698-4586 Fax. 310-698-4587 for better selection.
Recent pending home sale of a 3+2 bath house + 2 car detached garage a couple blocks away is not encouraging: $328k. It was advertised as needing TLC, however. Still the second bath ought to be good for a lot of extra $$ that I'm not seeing in the $328k price.
New color on cabinets will be a cream color.
Laminate countertop for $100 from Lowes. I can screw up several times installing it myself for the minimum cost of the install. Will ask Kevin to do it.
Drop in sinks w/o faucet holes not available at Lowes off the shelf. It may be more cost effective to re-route the plumbing to standard undersink style given the special order cost of some of the sinks. Plus will do away with need to run special dish washer water line. Need decision soon on this.
Need to pick wall / ceiling color for bath and kitch.
I have a sheet flooring selection from Lowes and will get them to install. Something like $2.50 for the sheet and $1.67 to install per square foot.
Rough electrical will complete after Kevin has framed in some of the new parts. He says Wednesday.
Alex the tile guy gave me a great price of $900 for the tub / shower. I may want to put in floor tile as well, but my preferred floor tile is rough. I'm concerned about trapping dirt in the tiles. Check Cal Tile Center, 5108 W. 190th Street Torrance, CA 90503 Tel. 310-698-4586 Fax. 310-698-4587 for better selection.
Recent pending home sale of a 3+2 bath house + 2 car detached garage a couple blocks away is not encouraging: $328k. It was advertised as needing TLC, however. Still the second bath ought to be good for a lot of extra $$ that I'm not seeing in the $328k price.
New color on cabinets will be a cream color.
Laminate countertop for $100 from Lowes. I can screw up several times installing it myself for the minimum cost of the install. Will ask Kevin to do it.
Drop in sinks w/o faucet holes not available at Lowes off the shelf. It may be more cost effective to re-route the plumbing to standard undersink style given the special order cost of some of the sinks. Plus will do away with need to run special dish washer water line. Need decision soon on this.
Need to pick wall / ceiling color for bath and kitch.
2009-08-15
Beautiful Long Beach Landscapes
An article at the LA Times home blog shows how the City of Long Beach is addressing water use concerns - with free landscape makeovers to much drier gardens. link and link
There's a BLBL demonstration garden, some example projects, and other helpful links.
There's a BLBL demonstration garden, some example projects, and other helpful links.
House update
Plumbing is done. PeterClarkePlumbing.com completed this job on time and on budget. I did not put in water lines for a dish washer. I think I will do that, but leave them dry so that there's room for expansion later. For hard to find plumbing parts, I have to recommend Reback's Plumbing N' Things, 14617 S. Western Ave, Gardena, CA, 90248. 310-324-4877. Peter referred me to Reback's. If you ever want to know where the good stores are, ask someone in the trade.
Rough electrical is done. Gene from local firm 1-Stop Electrical is doing this work. Gene is timely, reliable, and honest.
Monday the real demolition starts - both kitchen and bath. Kevin Janek will do the heavy lifting. Kevin and I seem to have a good rapport.
Today I met with Alex the tile guy and he gave me a good price estimate for retiling the bathroom. He can start after Wednesday.
Alex Hernandez
MGC Granite
562.480.3673 (cell)
I've purchased a basic tile from Home Depot and some fancier trim band tiles. I hope that together it's the right choice - not too fancy and not too basic. Alex will put in an integral niche and shelf for soaps, etc.
In the past week I've purchased a new medicine cabinet, bathroom vent fan, and wall mount range vent, all online. Most of my purchases for stuff like that have been online, and it's been a good experience so far.
Still to do:
find trim that I like
find sheet flooring for bathroom
find adhesive tile or sheet flooring for kitchen
Pick countertop for kitchen. HD says 1-2 weeks after they measure they can deliver a laminate countertop that I can drop a sink into. It's more expensive that I thought, however.
Pick paint colors for all over
Rough electrical is done. Gene from local firm 1-Stop Electrical is doing this work. Gene is timely, reliable, and honest.
Monday the real demolition starts - both kitchen and bath. Kevin Janek will do the heavy lifting. Kevin and I seem to have a good rapport.
Today I met with Alex the tile guy and he gave me a good price estimate for retiling the bathroom. He can start after Wednesday.
Alex Hernandez
MGC Granite
562.480.3673 (cell)
I've purchased a basic tile from Home Depot and some fancier trim band tiles. I hope that together it's the right choice - not too fancy and not too basic. Alex will put in an integral niche and shelf for soaps, etc.
In the past week I've purchased a new medicine cabinet, bathroom vent fan, and wall mount range vent, all online. Most of my purchases for stuff like that have been online, and it's been a good experience so far.
Still to do:
find trim that I like
find sheet flooring for bathroom
find adhesive tile or sheet flooring for kitchen
Pick countertop for kitchen. HD says 1-2 weeks after they measure they can deliver a laminate countertop that I can drop a sink into. It's more expensive that I thought, however.
Pick paint colors for all over
2009-08-13
Surfrider Foundation’s Ocean Friendly Gardens (OFG) Program
Surfrider Foundation’s Ocean Friendly Gardens (OFG) Program
“Be a part of the solution, not the pollution”
1. The concept - Ocean Friendly Gardens (OFG) & parkways utilize CPR© for the garden to prevent wet & dry-weather runoff:
• Conservation of (a) water, (b) fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides (water pollutants), (c) energy (moving water around the state is the #1 user of electricity), (d) and gas-powered machinery (air pollutants) through use of native & and climate adapted plants.
• Permeability increased, utilizing materials for a driveway, walkway and patio that allow water to percolate into the soil.
• Retention devices like rain gardens, rain barrels and rain chains as well as bio-swales, creek beds and dry wells.
2. Attend a free public workshop:
You’ll learn essential info from landscape pros, receive free tools, get info on incentive programs and make good use of Surfrider’s OFG blog with do-it-yourself steps: www.oceanfriendlygardens.org! When you make changes to your landscape, we will post your before-and-after pictures.
Hawthorne Workshop
Hawthorne Library Meeting Room, 12700 Grevillea Ave., Hawthorne, CA
Sat., Oct. 17, 1pm-4pm, Refreshments Served
Registration starts a ½ hour ahead of time. Space is limited.
Register today: 310-371-7222, ext. 200 or www.sbesc.com (“workshops”)
Note: OFG workshops are offered to residents in the following cities (though Surfrider members and volunteers who don’t live there won’t be turned away): Carson, Culver City, El Segundo, Gardena, Hawthorne, Hermosa Beach, Inglewood, Lawndale, Lomita, Malibu, Manhattan Beach, Palos Verdes Estates, Rancho Palos Verdes, Redondo Beach, Rolling Hills, Rolling Hills Estates, West Hollywood, Torrance, and several unincorporated communities in LA County (Topanga, Baldwin Hills, Athens.)
3. Garden Assistance Program (GAP) – volunteer!
The GAP is a hands-on program, applying what you learn in the OFG workshop to people’s landscapes. We ask those we help to work with us to help others. See the blog for more details. Volunteer with a Surfrider Chapter OFG GAP by contacting OFG Program Coordinator Paul Herzog: pherzog@surfrider.org, 310-439-2500.
4. Tool donations
We’re looking for shovels, picks, rakes, spades, hand tools and more. We’ll pick them up from you.
“Be a part of the solution, not the pollution”
1. The concept - Ocean Friendly Gardens (OFG) & parkways utilize CPR© for the garden to prevent wet & dry-weather runoff:
• Conservation of (a) water, (b) fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides (water pollutants), (c) energy (moving water around the state is the #1 user of electricity), (d) and gas-powered machinery (air pollutants) through use of native & and climate adapted plants.
• Permeability increased, utilizing materials for a driveway, walkway and patio that allow water to percolate into the soil.
• Retention devices like rain gardens, rain barrels and rain chains as well as bio-swales, creek beds and dry wells.
2. Attend a free public workshop:
You’ll learn essential info from landscape pros, receive free tools, get info on incentive programs and make good use of Surfrider’s OFG blog with do-it-yourself steps: www.oceanfriendlygardens.org! When you make changes to your landscape, we will post your before-and-after pictures.
Hawthorne Workshop
Hawthorne Library Meeting Room, 12700 Grevillea Ave., Hawthorne, CA
Sat., Oct. 17, 1pm-4pm, Refreshments Served
Registration starts a ½ hour ahead of time. Space is limited.
Register today: 310-371-7222, ext. 200 or www.sbesc.com (“workshops”)
Note: OFG workshops are offered to residents in the following cities (though Surfrider members and volunteers who don’t live there won’t be turned away): Carson, Culver City, El Segundo, Gardena, Hawthorne, Hermosa Beach, Inglewood, Lawndale, Lomita, Malibu, Manhattan Beach, Palos Verdes Estates, Rancho Palos Verdes, Redondo Beach, Rolling Hills, Rolling Hills Estates, West Hollywood, Torrance, and several unincorporated communities in LA County (Topanga, Baldwin Hills, Athens.)
3. Garden Assistance Program (GAP) – volunteer!
The GAP is a hands-on program, applying what you learn in the OFG workshop to people’s landscapes. We ask those we help to work with us to help others. See the blog for more details. Volunteer with a Surfrider Chapter OFG GAP by contacting OFG Program Coordinator Paul Herzog: pherzog@surfrider.org, 310-439-2500.
4. Tool donations
We’re looking for shovels, picks, rakes, spades, hand tools and more. We’ll pick them up from you.
2009-08-07
Car cast
From my brother via email.
If you like NPR's car talk and Adam Carolla (formerly of Love Line, The Man Show, 97.1 FM talk, etc) you may like CarCast- Adam's relatively new podcast about cars, etc. Listened to the episode with Jay Leno and found it pretty interesting. More testosterone than NPR with Adam's brand of humor...
Good times!
link
If you like NPR's car talk and Adam Carolla (formerly of Love Line, The Man Show, 97.1 FM talk, etc) you may like CarCast- Adam's relatively new podcast about cars, etc. Listened to the episode with Jay Leno and found it pretty interesting. More testosterone than NPR with Adam's brand of humor...
Good times!
link
2009-08-02
The great Lair mushroom hunt
When I was at Lair of the Bear, I went mushrooming with Amy BeberVanzo. Here's a nice photo of her posing by road marker 5N67 - the farthest afield that we roamed (near 8000' elevation).
A year or two ago she found Porcini mushrooms just off a nearby access road. We didn't have luck finding any Porcini, or delectable mushrooms of any kind. The best we found was "edible but inconsequential" (Orange Peel mushroom) and "thought to be edible" (puffballs). We did have a great time walking and exploring and I came back with these amazing pictures. Thanks, Amy!
This is a marmot. We were somewhere around 7500' elevation.
There were a couple of this golden hued mushroom that glowed like a leprechaun's pot of gold.
I found a few of these slime molds too. They have a very short life span. VERY slimy!
Orange Peel mushroom.
Termites were swarming a fallen log and a dead tree
Puffballs!
The insides of the puffballs go from looking like a soft, ripe cheese to looking like this as they get progressively riper.
Do you know what this is?
Here it is again. Now do you know?
Yes, I know it's not a mushroom. Later I'll have to post about all the flowers that I couldn't identify without help.
A year or two ago she found Porcini mushrooms just off a nearby access road. We didn't have luck finding any Porcini, or delectable mushrooms of any kind. The best we found was "edible but inconsequential" (Orange Peel mushroom) and "thought to be edible" (puffballs). We did have a great time walking and exploring and I came back with these amazing pictures. Thanks, Amy!
This is a marmot. We were somewhere around 7500' elevation.
There were a couple of this golden hued mushroom that glowed like a leprechaun's pot of gold.
I found a few of these slime molds too. They have a very short life span. VERY slimy!
Orange Peel mushroom.
Termites were swarming a fallen log and a dead tree
Puffballs!
The insides of the puffballs go from looking like a soft, ripe cheese to looking like this as they get progressively riper.
Do you know what this is?
Here it is again. Now do you know?
Yes, I know it's not a mushroom. Later I'll have to post about all the flowers that I couldn't identify without help.
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