In the garden, and RAIN!!!!
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, December 25, 2025 04:27
VIEWED: 1005090
PAGE 329 of 1154
Well dang, I formally measured the ball-jar rain-gauge and I got only 1.5", pretty exactly. All that noisy rain was a bust.
But I did notice that the mesquite tree leaves have turned a brilliant, vibrant yellow over the last few days.
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Aright.....
I'm almost done with the computer. Aside from the fact that it's not a blazing new unit, it's basically perfect now, and has every single program I use for day to day stuff as well as all of the once I use for my various projects when I get back to them... all of them upgraded to the newest versions.
Just doing some temp file cleanup and running anti-virus/malware one last time, then I'm going to put the shell back on it and run a new drive backup and put it on 3 external drives so I never have to do any of this again.
Well....
At least until I upgrade to a new computer. 
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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"I wonder why the city doesn't plant coast live oak as a street tree."
A lot of people dislike that the coast live oak is a very asymmetrical, gnarled tree.
They want something prettier looking, I guess. And I haven't looked deeply into it, but I think the coast live oak (and perhaps a few other evergreen oaks) are exacting in their retirements, in terms of air space/ soil compaction, watering, and symbiosis. The oaks I have (2 coast live oak quercus agrifolia and the 2 I thought were some kind of scrub oak that also appear to be coast live oak) planted themselves, so I guess they found a good enough spot. HOWEVER, the 5 years of drought, along with the fact that the uphill neighbors weren't watering their property as much - so my plants didn't get the benefit of underground surface water - tested them severely. The coast live oaks do NOT like direct water especially in summer, so keeping them alive was challenging. Their health has been taxed.
Anyway, whenever you see a coast live oak in a human landscape, you see it with TONS of space around it. I suspect they wouldn't do well hemmed in by sidewalks, curbs, landing strips, roads, etc, with direct irrigation that usually sustains public landscaping.
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Their root systems might play hell on structural stuff too. After seeing what those maples did up that close to my house, I have to imagine that a lot of planning goes into planting trees these days.
I wouldn't be surprised if insurance companies outright ban certain types of trees being planted around structures, sidewalks, parking lots, etc.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Amazingly, the coast live oak next to the house seems respectful of the foundation, even though the tree is nearly 30 years old, 40' tall and having planted itself 5' from the house.
But the ficus trees Los Angeles so innocently planted many years ago ... 
FWIW urban foresters have gotten much more savvy about what to plant, where to plant, and how to plant. I had the opportunity to talk briefly with my city's forester. And I'm sure she had better things to do with her time, but I would have loved to have taken her out for a beer and listen to whatever she had to say about trees.
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Jesus Christ look at that picture. Makes what happened around my house look tame by comparison. Looks like something out of a Lovecraft novel.
I didn't know for sure that I was right about the insurance thing. I was just making a logical guess.
Yup. I can't imagine that the foresters can just plant whatever they want to plant unless the city is looking to get their insurance plans dropped.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Ficus trees are like that. They have very muscular looking roots, Actually, their trunk and branch structure looks muscular as well.
I have a funny story about city trees ... this was just 4 houses west of me. There was a tree planted in the parkway that had a HUGE branch - 4" diameter at the base - that stuck out pretty much sideways from the trunk, over the sidewalk, at around 5' above the sidewalk. Given the diameter of the branch, obviously it had been left growing there for quite some time. All but little kids had to duck when walking down the sidewalk. Anyway, I came home from work just in time to see an ambulance take off from in front of the house. So I asked the owner (source of one of my rescue kittens who had a kitten dumped in his yard) what happened. And apparently, there were a bunch of people walking along the sidewalk, and of course it wasn't wide enough to accommodate everyone across its width, so one guy was walking ahead but kind of turned around to talk to the people behind him. And he walked full-force into the tree branch hanging over the sidewalk, and conked himself out cold. Hence the ambulance trundling him off. Anyway, the tree branch was gone the very next day. I got up pretty early, and it was gone by then.
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Quote:I've seen what I THOUGHT were coast live oaks planted in parkways, in healthy green grass, in a clearly irrigated landscape nestled between sidewalk and street. Maybe I mis-identified the trees.
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
"I wonder why the city doesn't plant coast live oak as a street tree."
A lot of people dislike that the coast live oak is a very asymmetrical, gnarled tree.
They want something prettier looking, I guess. And I haven't looked deeply into it, but I think the coast live oak (and perhaps a few other evergreen oaks) are exacting in their retirements, in terms of air space/ soil compaction, watering, and symbiosis. The oaks I have (2 coast live oak quercus agrifolia and the 2 I thought were some kind of scrub oak that also appear to be coast live oak) planted themselves, so I guess they found a good enough spot. HOWEVER, the 5 years of drought, along with the fact that the uphill neighbors weren't watering their property as much - so my plants didn't get the benefit of underground surface water - tested them severely. The coast live oaks do NOT like direct water especially in summer, so keeping them alive was challenging. Their health has been taxed.
Anyway, whenever you see a coast live oak in a human landscape, you see it with TONS of space around it. I suspect they wouldn't do well hemmed in by sidewalks, curbs, landing strips, roads, etc, with direct irrigation that usually sustains public landscaping.
I will say that my quercus tomentella seems OK with summer water every 2-3 weeks, and just loves the winter rains. However, it has a very odd growth habit, unlike any of the online pictures of its species: it seems to like to make side sprouts into leaders. It's like the axial tip just doesn't want to grow.
Speaking of rain... the "official" rainfall here, as measured by my "rain gage" was 2" onthe nose.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
I'd nuke a BILLION PEOPLE if it would save the other 7 billion from living under Putin. Hell, I might go all the way to the last 100 people on Earth to keep this planet from being under fascist rule.- WISHIMAY
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https://calscape.org/Quercus-tomentella-(Island-Oak)?srchcr=sc5dea1d4a
eacfc
https://www.laspilitas.com/groups/oaks/california_oak3.html
Sorry, I got nothing about your quercus.
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