Posted by George J. Janczyn on August 15, 2009
About 20 years ago a friend gave me a small braided ficus tree in a pot, just about like this one:
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After about a year, we transferred it to the empty slope in our back yard, along with a couple of potted pines (Christmas trees). For about a year we had it on a drip watering tube to get it established but we don’t need to irrigate it at all any more, even though it gets full sun all day (although the pines are getting taller and beginning to give it a little shade). I guess it’s over 25 feet tall now. I’m really glad we planted it well away from the patio because it has grown an impressive root system.
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The funny thing is that for the first time in all these years, last July (2008) it began to produce hundreds, if not thousands, of little red berry-like fruit (inedible fig, I surmise) and dropping them like crazy producing a mess (or mulch heaven?) on the ground. This year it’s producing them again:
What puzzles me is why the tree would wait all these years before doing this, since nothing in its environment has changed. Any ideas?
Posted in Landscaping | Tagged: Ficus benjamina | 2 Comments »
Posted by George J. Janczyn on August 12, 2009
When we purchased our home in 1987, we still remembered the severe drought in the 70s when San Diego was under mandatory restrictions. Since the house was in need of landscaping, right off the bat the decision was to stick to plants and trees that require a minimum of water. We decided against using automatic sprinklers, and do all watering by hand with a hose. A large slope in the back yard was the only exception, where we installed four sprinklers with water-conserving rotator nozzles…again, under manual control so that we chose when water was needed. The slope was nothing but freeway iceplant which we ripped out and replaced with a variety of things like rosemary, pyracantha, india hawthorne, honeysuckle, and red apple iceplant. We did splurge on a small patch of lawn, Marathon sod, which we were told was a low-moderate water user. Not really. We’ve since decided to give it up and replace it with something else. If you’re interested, here’s a catalog of what we have at the house.
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Posted in Landscaping, Water | Leave a Comment »
Posted by George J. Janczyn on August 11, 2009
If you’re going to argue the merits, you need to study the topic.
OpenCongress.org is a great service that provides comprehensive information about all things Congress, including full-text and status of bills. Of particular interest for many people these days is the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009.
It’s not just the full text that OpenCongress provides, they have made it possible for people to make and read comments about any individual part of the bill, or to link to specific parts of the bill for email or blog discussions elsewhere. Check it out:
Posted in Health care, U.S. Congress | Tagged: Health care, OpenCongress.org | 1 Comment »
Posted by George J. Janczyn on August 7, 2009
At $.75 per issue (same as the LA Times), I expect the San Diego Union-Tribune to distinguish itself by doing a significant amount of original reporting, not just reprint wire service stories on the net. Long before David C. Copley sold the newspaper to Edward R. Moss [Correction: it was sold to Platinum Equity (thanks Joe). Also I should have written that Copley Press sold it] , the U-T was already going in the wire services direction, shedding reporters and cutting back on original coverage. The paper has grown thinner and thinner. Its approach to local news seems half-hearted. Under the new ownership, so far I haven’t see any sign of that changing. [Aug 12: More layoffs have been announced]
Meanwhile, I have seen the LA Times improve with the merger of its California section with the main ‘A’ section (with regional coverage becoming more substantive) and a noticeably reduced reliance on wire service reports.
I decided to do a brief informal comparison between the two papers to look, specifically, at how much original reporting the LA Times and SD Union-Tribune publish. Below I’ve itemized a working week’s worth of original reports in the main sections from each paper.
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Posted in Newspapers | Tagged: Los Angeles Times, San Diego Union-Tribune | 2 Comments »
Posted by George J. Janczyn on August 1, 2009
Chris Cruse has an interesting discussion about Poway’s fixed fees for water regardless of amount used The More You Conserve, the More You Pay (be sure to read the comments). She also posted separately on the sewer fee: Money Down the Drain.
San Diego customers have a Water Base Fee, Sewer Base Fee, Sewer Service Charge and Storm Drain Fee.
Posted in Water | Leave a Comment »
