There is Something Beyond the Straw Bale

...w” that supports beneficial wildlife. We’re also fans of hardy and climate appropriate perennial fruits and vegetables–beyond that solitary straw bale we have a lot of edible perennial plants and a bunch of work to do to straighten out the yard after years of other priorities. Site of future seasonal rain garden. Towards that end, our landscaper, Laramee Haynes and crew are coming next week to clean things up, install a kind of seasonal rain garde...

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The Manzanita Miracle, or, why you should love native plants if you live in a dry climate

...the other is “Los Angeles is a desert, so I’m planting cactus.” Neither is appropriate. In Los Angeles, a lawn needs about 50 inches of water a year to stay green–and it usually gets twice that much–up to 100 inches. Compare that to manzanita’s 4 inches. Cactus doesn’t need much water, true, but we are not a desert–yet. We are in the process of desertification, yes, which is not a good thing. At the end of this road, we don’t end up in a dreamy Ge...

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Thomas Pynchon on Pizza

...as all but crunchy with fistfuls of herbs only marginally Italian and more appropriate in a cough remedy, the rennetless cheese reminded customers variously of bottled hollandaise or joint compound, and the options were all vegetables rigorously organic, whose high water content saturated, long before it baked through, a stone-ground twelve-grain crust with the lightness and digestibility of a manhole cover. Pynchon being Pynchon, pizza appears fr...

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Leave Your Leaves Alone

Photo: David Newsom Our friends at the Wild Yards Project (episode 126 of the podcast) have posted an interview with plant guru Barbara Eisenstein, “Leave Your Leaves Alone, and Let The Wild Things In!” Eisenstein has a nuanced view of native gardening noting in the interview that we need to consider a mix of native and hardy non-natives in our urban spaces, Our urban landscape bears little resemblance to pre-development conditions. Consequently,...

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Permaculture Design Course at the Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano

...cs, interview, site analysis, group brainstorm, mapping with graphics APRIL 12 / WATER – Water in context, water systems, homescale vs. large scale, appropriate scale technologies. Presentation on rainwater and greywater basics, fundamental earthworks basics, observation and mapping water excersize, greywater workshop, rain barrel building demo APRIL 13 / WATER OFF-SITE – including larger scale home systems design, hands-on rain barrel/greywater s...

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