The Great Water Conservation Grift

...rks, schools and athletic fields especially when that use is small compared to what the Resnicks extract to make their billions. My big fear is that, while technically the water restrictions don’t apply to trees, in practice people withhold water from trees and we end up with a further destruction of our already stressed urban tree canopy. Our cities get hotter and the Resnicks get richer....

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Least Favorite Plant: Tree of Heaven

...new metric: the economic health of a city can be judged by the size of its trees of heaven (aka Ailanthus altissima). The higher the Ailanthus altissima, the more likely a city is to economically distressed. Tree of heaven is a super weed much reviled by gardeners and landscapers for its unstoppable ability to grow in nearly every climate in the most inhospitable conditions. In a move that will raise a lot of horticultural hackles, the Detroit Tre...

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Saturday Linkages: The Calm After the Storm

...tlatl: http://dirttime.com/?p=2741 Gardening What to do with storm damaged trees: http://www.treesaregood.org/pressrelease/press/firstaid.aspx … Check out The vegetable garden by M.M. Vilmorin-Andrieux, of Paris on Google Play! Old book recommended by John Jeavons: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Vilmorin_Andrieux_et_cie_The_vegetable_garden?id=YHQNAQAAMAAJ … Bikes ‘Getting Jerry Browned’ and other new phrases for Californians http://w...

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Lost from the cradle of connection: the high price of driving

...he way from the Santa Monica Mountains to Pyramid Lake. Cameras caught him making four freeway crossings in the past, and certainly he made more He had to cross highways. An adult mountain lion needs about 200 miles of home range to make a living. State officials call his death “Sad, but not surprising.” On August 10th, P32 became “roadkill.” Roadkill is an odd term, isn’t it? The road didn’t kill P32, a driver did. There’s some odd blameshifting...

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Showers to Flowers

...any less and you’ll risk a backup. 2. Cut the waste line from your shower, making sure that you are cutting the pipe before the point it meets up with anything coming out of the toilet. Remember you don’t want blackwater in your garden. If possible (i.e. if easily accessible via a trap door or some other configuration), install a three way diverter valve like the one pictured above, so that water can be shifted back to the sewer, if needed, such a...

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