Half-Off Discounts on UC Botanical Garden Memberships

 Last year I took advantage of a great bargain on Groupon: a huge discount on memberships to the UC Botanical Garden. Now the offer has come around again and you shouldn't miss it. You can get a one-year individual membership for only $22 (a $45 value) or a one-year family membership for $32 (a $65 value). For that small investment you can have access to 34 acres of amazing plants from all over the world, and discounts to many of their programs, concerts, and plant sales. The Bot is a place with year-round appeal--there's always something incredible in bloom.

Click this link to take advantage of this Groupon deal. (Disclaimer: I will receive $10 for every person who takes advantage of this offer from this link.)

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Alcatraz: The Garden Show

Did you catch the new show "Alcatraz" last night? I watched a bit but I confess I was much more impressed with the actual place than I was with the show. But it reminded me of the tour I took of the Alcatraz gardens a couple years ago. The gardens are in the process of being restored and the tour of the open gardens, with their spectacular views, is a lovely contrast to the creepy, oppressive setting of the prison itself. So here is my own little "Alcatraz" show--the garden version.

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How Bad Economies Lead to Bad Trees

San Francisco is putting in place a policy regarding the maintenance of street trees that I fear other communities could soon pick up on. In an effort to save approximately $300K per year in maintenance costs, the city is transferring responsibility for pruning and maintenance of street trees to individual property owners. For trees that run 20 ft. or higher, pruning can cost between $300 and $1000. I can easily foresee that cash-strapped homeowners will either forgo the necessary pruning, leading to hazardous tree conditions that could endanger lives and property, or they may attempt to do the pruning themselves, in which case we can expect to see a lot of badly pruned trees and injured amateur tree-pruners. This policy has, to some degree, been in effect for a while, but a new round of notices have been sent to lucky homeowners notifying them of the transfer of responsibility.

This kind of policy raises all kinds of interesting questions. If a homeowner doesn't want to be responsible for pruning a street tree every year, can they just have the tree removed on their own? Could we see streets stripped bare of trees because homeowners decide they're cost-prohibitive? How much is it going to cost the city to police the trees to make sure they are being kept healthy and safe? What impact may poorly maintained and potentially hazardous trees have on already devastated property values?

Property owners are being advised that they can appeal the transfer of responsibility for the trees, and if this were happening in my town, I would certainly do so. I understand that municipalities across the country need to cut their budgets but this is a pretty good example of a short-term fix being turned into a bad long-term policy.

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Welcome, 2012!

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Finally, A Delicious Way to Prepare Brussels Sprouts!

Source: blomsterverkstad.blogspot.com via Robin on Pinterest

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Are You Pinterested?

I confess that I have reached a point of near-saturation as far as social networking goes. There are only so many sites you can check in on, post on, and maintain some interest in in order to connect with people you may or may not actually know. But I recently discovered a site that I'm truly having fun with: Pinterest. Pinterest is a virtual pinboard that functions as a social network. It allows you to "pin" things that you see on the Internet to "boards" that you create on the topics that interest you. Your pinned items are seen by others and can be "repinned" so that a lot of sharing goes on. As with Twitter, you can choose to follow people with similar interests to see what they're pinning and, likewise, people can follow you and see what you're pinning.

When I first heard about Pinterest, my initial reaction was, "what's the point?" But it only took me a short time of playing around in Pinterest to get it. Pinterest is a place where ideas can spark and catch fire. As I started pinning garden-related photos, I found lots of ideas swirling around of things I wanted to try in my garden, things I wanted to write about, things I wanted to research further. I'm interested in Mexican and Spanish style in the garden and I spent some time looking for images of that. I've also been thinking about fairies lately and I had a lot of fun exploring photos of fairy gardens. And naturally, I'm interested in edible gardening so I looked for those images too. All of them went onto my "Garden Scenes I Love" board. And there's no limit to the boards you can have, so I'm also working on boards for "Crafts", "For the Home", and "Places I'd Like to Go."

I think Pinterest could be a fun and worthwhile place to play around. If you'd like to follow me on Pinterest, just click the following button:



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I'm Back (Though I Was Never Really Gone)

It's hard to believe I haven't posted here since June 28th. This summer seems to have passed in a blur and we're already well into autumn. All I can say is that this blog has been up and running for five years now and this was a much-needed break.

In case you're wondering what I was doing while I wasn't blogging, the bulk of my time went into writing the book I announced last May:  California Fruit and Vegetable Gardening. This is my first book and writing it was really fun and really, really exhausting. It will be published in February so I'm now working on marketing plans. In a distant past life I was a marketing communications writer for a few years, so this process is a little like using muscles I haven't used in ages--exhilarating and painful. In the next few months I'll be developing a website for the book, but for now you can go to Amazon.com to check it out and pre-order it. And to follow the process to publication and beyond and also pick up lots of links to great edible gardening sources, you can Like the Facebook page for the book.

Besides writing the book I traveled to Indianapolis in August for the Garden Writers Association Symposium. I met lots of terrific fellow garden writers, toured some beautiful gardens, and discovered that the myth of Midwesterners being exceptionally nice people is really true. Then I went to Michigan to visit my dad and stepmom and explored my dad's native habitat in the U.P. I also left a few dollars behind in the Indian casinos. Enough said.

If there's one thing I wasn't doing during my blogging break it was gardening and it shows. My gardens are a weedy disaster right now. But I'm anxious to clear out the debris from this year's garden and start planning next year's garden. I got started this weekend and there's much work ahead. I have plans to redo my front yard with a mix of edibles and ornamentals and I'm hoping to return my back yard to some kind of order and make it a place to really relax. More on that in future posts.

It feels good be blogging again!

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