Loquat Season

...of these trees live in public spaces, the parkway and people’s front yards making them prime candidates for urban foraging i.e. free food. The tree itself has a vaguely tropical appearance with waxy leaves that look like the sort of plastic foliage that used to grace dentist office lobbies back in the 1960s. In short it’s a real tree that looks fake with fruit that nobody seems to care about. The loquat tree invites considerable derision from east...

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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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Matt’s Wild Cherry Tomato

...s a wild-type tomato that grows without supplemental irrigation. Many avid vegetable gardeners have probably had the experience of tomatoes that reseed and grow without care. In my experience these hardy rogue tomatoes are invariably on the cherry side of the tomato size spectrum. This makes sense as the tomato’s wild ancestor is much smaller than modern beefsteak varieties. Matt’s Wild Cherry was obtained in Hidalgo, Mexico by Teresa Arellanos de...

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Getting Hardscaping Right

...tain. Every home needs a “hide the s@#t fence.” There needs to be a place to put potting soils, shovels, compost piles etc. I’m just about to embark on a couple of building projects–extending the back patio deck, building permanent vegetable beds and the aforementioned hide the s@#t fence. This time I’m going to get it right! How have your hardscaping endeavors gone? What have you done right and wrong? Have you found hardscaping solutions that did...

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Edible and Tasty Arugula Flowers

Our winter vegetable garden is just about finished. This week I’m going to tear out most of it and plant tomatoes and a few other summer veggies. I may keep some of the arugula that has gone to flower a little longer. Why? arugula flower taste great in salads bees love them arugula self seeds readily The flowers, which taste like the leaves, are a reminder of my favorite time of year: arugula season. Each year I curse myself for not planting more...

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