In the garden, and RAIN!!!!
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, December 25, 2025 04:27
VIEWED: 1005090
PAGE 4 of 1154
A wild hill across the street- lucky you! Any coyotes? If so, care to share? I have a few too many feral cats around. I DID see a coyote, once, but I guess it doesn't like a diet of feral cats because it didn't stick around!
Good thing, then, that I'm still watering that parking-lot tree, four gallons at a time.
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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
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Coyotes - yes. I WISH I could share them!
And many years ago a bobcat. I hope there're still some around, but they're secretive things. You don't often see them.
I'm glad you're watering the tree too! I imagine a happy tree, going 'aaahhhhhh...' in tree-speak.
SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
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Not my front yard, but something to aspire to:
You can add energy and interest to even the plainest, smallest, flattest piece of ground
http://www.californianativelandscapedesign.com/
I think my love of CA native plants and naturalistic designs comes from my childhood of running wild thru the fields near our house, altho that was 55 years and 3,000 miles away.
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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
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Hey, after two weeks of ridiculously hot temperatures (86-93 def F. Or, for you Brenda, 29 to 34 deg C) we got a spell of rain. Unlike the previous storm, which dumped a lot of rain onto the foothills but not much elsewhere, this one was a widespread storm that hit the LA basin pretty much everywhere. You can see LA DWP rain gages here: http://www.ladpw.org/wrd/precip/alert_rain/index.cfm?cont=36hr.cfm
So altho we are terribly behind in rain this year, again, at least we got a bit of a reprieve. The plants are happier now, the fungi ans bacteria, the bugs, earthworms, grubs, lizards, mice, rabbits, gophers and other small creatures will be happy too, as the plants respond to the rain. So will the hawks and coyotes and bobcats. The land here is smiling. We have been blessed.
The forecast is for more hot weather afterwards for about ten days. We're going to need a whole season's worth of rain in March if we're going to catch up to even average. It's happened before, but to give you an idea of how rare that is, that single event has a specific name: Miracle March, and it happened in 1991.
I'm particularly vexed about the weather because I had planted a bunch of seeds: cosmos, bachelor buttons, mixed-color CA poppies, lupines, wild oats, and purple three-awn, right before the weather turned ridiculous, and as of now only a few lupines started coming up. The CA poppies need to be sown in place- they can't be transplanted. But I ordered more seeds, and I have a bunch of used styrofoam cups and potting mix/ garden dirt ready, and I'm going to start seeds indoors- to hell with the weather.
In addition to a regular birdbath, I have a large water-filled 2 1/2 foot blue ceramic tray .... the kind of thing you might put under a very large houseplant ... on the ground for the little animals. As I recover from surgery, I get a chance to see the backyard doings. Three days ago I was none too please to see a feral cat drinking from the tray, but two days ago a squirrel came for much-needed water. So it prolly serves the night-time community as well.
Onward with the gardening! Happy with the rain.
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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
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In addition to a water pipeline from BC to CA, I propose an air pipeline! That away, we can send you our hot air and you can send us some water!
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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
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I finally bought the last of the "big" front-yard plants. Most of the shrubs are for the front of the house, to shade the wall in the morning:
Sugar bush (rhus ovata) is a big lady who will go between the two windows
Underneath the two small windows will be small island manzanitas, arctostaphylos insularis
and underneath the large living room window will be a short (but wide) coffeeberry (Rhamnus californica) 
Off to the side of the island oak (quercus which has already been planted)
will be a couple of bushes of the ever-elusive hollyleaf redberry (rhamnus crocea ilicifolia), which I've been looking for since more than a year ago. Finally found a source last week. If it's happy, it will reward you with lots of tasty berries, assuming that you can get to the before the birds do.
Most of my plants were chosen from CA natives to be water-wise, pretty, and have some value to birds, hummingbirds, pollinators, moths, and butterflies. Altho I have three hummingbird feeders up, they haven't been visited lately - I guess because there are many more flowers in bloom now.
And just as I was pleased to see animals drinking from the large dish of water on the ground, I saw a hummingbird busily working the red autumn sage (salvia greggii) which- contrary to its name, is just beginning to bloom in spring. The hummer was completely ignoring the feeder not ten feet away!
Other flowers blooming now are the pink flowering currant, sundancer daisy, and monkeyflower.
In the forecast: One inch of rain, starting Sunday. Uh huh. I'll believe it when I see it. So many storms have approached us ... It's coming! It's going to be HUGE! Get ready! ... only to see the storm front peak and then evaporate away. So while I have my fingers crossed, I guess I'm not going to get too excited about it.
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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
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SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
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That sure sounds nice to me ...
SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
For whatever reason the website's always been pretty lackadaisical about getting data up. If this last storm dropped an inch of rain we're still 3 inches behind. At this time of year it's a 25% shortfall.
SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I set out a little straight-side plastic container, it looks like we got about 0.5". Not the whopping storm that was predicted, but better than nothing. At least we're only a couple of inches below average, not six inches, like last year. I predict there will be a nice annual flower show, except for lupines as they seem to need a lot more water.
So, I got my water bill, and they show what you've been doing for the past year and how it compares to the year before. OK, granted that in that two-month billing period we had a couple of storms that let me turn off the irrigation for two weeks, but I also watered once a day for a WEEK to try to give my seeds a running start. (It didn't, I just couldn't overcome the record-setting hot, dry weather.) So given all the pluses and minuses of the last billing period, and comparing the highest bill of the previous year to the lowest bill of this year, which was the most recent, I dropped from 45 CCF to about 7 CCF (centicubic feet).
WOW, that's pretty damn good!
Today we got into a spurious Spring Cleaning. It started with the new computer .... but the desk needed cleaning, and the wall and floor. And really underneath the printer stand, and how about taking out the old printer and putting in the new one? And getting rid of some of those tangled wires? And the sofa really needs vacuuming, the sofa-blanket needs washing, and what about that crap that's been collecting dust in the other corner and ...??? WHEW!
None of the stuff that I usually do on Sunday got done, and a "15-minute" job turned into an entire afternoon. But we all accomplished a lot.
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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.
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