How to kill your palm tree

...or candle style cut, which leaves just a few fronds poking out at the top. Pruning a palm this way will only stress the palm and stands a good chance of killing it. Here’s a quick photo reference. Prune your palm with dirty tools. Diseases are carried on chainsaws and the like. Poor pruning hygiene has infected the stately 100 year old Canary Island Date palms in our local Elysian Park with deadly Fusarium wilt. Simple carelessness destroyed this...

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Eating the Void: On Making a Raw Café Gratitude Chocolate Hazelnut Pie

I have a small collection of odd cookbooks that have, for the most part, gone unused which is probably a good thing. One that’s collected dust for years is I Am Grateful: Recipes and Lifestyle of Café Gratitude. Friends who have been to this oh-so-California restaurant say that’s it’s good while simultaneously a parody of itself. As the intro to the cookbook notes, The Café Gratitude menu gives you the opportunity to start practicing saying somet...

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Free Webinar on Making and Using Compost Teas

UC Berkeley Botanical Garden’s compost tea process. One of the most contentious topics in gardening and agriculture is compost tea. I’m still sorting out what I think of the practice, which is why I’m excited about an upcoming free webinar from the folks at eXtension (sic). Here’s the 411: About the Webinar This webinar is aimed at a general audience, gardeners, farmers, and ag professionals. Viewers will learn how to make consistent and safe com...

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Saturday Tweets: Bird Eyesight, Making and Marginalia

Clear-cut tropical forest revitalized with industrial orange peel waste https://t.co/tGl1sbVvif — Root Simple (@rootsimple) September 2, 2017 Support A Skid Row Bike Lane – Sign the Petition! https://t.co/dLzwO0MFXk via @Change #bikeLA @lacbc — Colin Bogart (@ColinBogart) August 31, 2017 Right so I was researching bird eyesight and can someone explain why these feel like really obscure memes pic.twitter.com/qXkJg16iCV — max ✨ (@naxxramen) August...

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Making Mistakes and an Update

A big thanks to Erik Volkman who let me know that I had accidentally re-released episode 127 of the podcast (an interview with Fr. Mark Kowalewski on apocalyptic thinking) instead of episode 128 (an interview with James Heard and Ashton Hamm of UXO Architects). I’ve fixed the problem but due to the kludgy way that podcasts propagate your podcast app may still play the audio from episode 127 instead of the interview with the architects. You can he...

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