Campfire Cooking: Fish in Clay (& Vegetarian Options!)

...nce the process is the same. You can dress sturdy veggies like carrots and baby potatoes with fat and herbs, wrap them with leaves, cover that with clay and throw it on the coals. Pascal also recommended trying fruit, like pears. He likes pears with native California black sage. Better still, you can skip the clay and use grass instead, which is much easier for impromptu cooking. Grass is good insulator, maybe not good enough for a delicate trout,...

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Cactus Thief Strikes Again

...dered another extreme strategy: shower the cactus thief with free flats of baby cacti. The latter strategy could even lead to the first ever Root Simple Upworthy style clickbait headline, “Thief Steals Cactus and the Thorny Response Will Have You in Tears.” Stoic philosopher Epictetus set me straight on what I should really do. He says, “Stop admiring your clothes and you are not angry at the man who steals them . . . our losses and our pains have...

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Top Six California Native Plant Performers

...in the scientific name for this member of the buckwheat family. Give this baby some room. Ours is doing well in partial shade. 5. Toyon (Heteromeles arbutitolia) This treeish native stared the drought in the face and laughed. We planted it in the neighbor’s yard where it got cut down accidentally. A year later it had grown back to its former glory. Birds love the little red berries, which can be dried for a not very exciting human snack. 6. Coyot...

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Adopt an Indigo Plant in Los Angeles

...hang in a prominent place in your home, lest you forget about your little baby! There are a limited number of seedlings available. Please reserve yours by filling out the form below. For those of you not able to pick up a seedling here in Los Angeles, I am willing to experiment with shipping them directly to you in the mail for the cost of postage. I have zero real world experience with this but have been reading up on the process and believe tha...

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Behold the Ant Lion

...CWkfAyfBDHE Cunning. Efficient. Voracious. This is the ant lion. This is a baby ant lion, the larval stage. It makes you shudder to think what it’s like when it’s grown up, right? Behold the adult ant lion: It looks like a damselfly or dragonfly but is not related to either. The adult ant lion is sometimes called an antlion lacewing. They are not much seen by humans, because despite those beautiful wings, they are weak fliers, and mostly lurch aro...

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