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Sunday, April 30, 2006

AGN is an iTunes Top 100 Audioblog Podcast

Wandering through iTunes today showed that A Gardener's Notebook is currently #63 of the Top 100 Audioblog podcasts in Apple's podcast directory. WooHoo!



Considering how many podcasts are in the directory, this makes me feel pretty good. Thanks to all the subscribers who use iTunes. Tell your friends! Tell your enemies! Tell your Ma! (SMILE)

If you usually listen to AGN directly from the web site, consider subscribing to the podcast via iTunes or your favorite podcatching client. Subscriber numbers, reviews and votes on Podcast Alley and other sites is a great way of letting me know you are listening.

Link: Podcast Alley
Link: Subscribe to AGN using iTunes

Weeding..., A Video

Just in case your own weeding has fallen behind, and you can't get away from the computer to change that fact...I present "Weeding...", a short video where you can pretend you are out fighting the weeds in your own garden instead of writing that report on the poor quality of a supplier's goods which his effecting overall quality at your company...or whatever else you are doing instead of taking care of your garden. (SMILE)

The best thing about this though, is I actually did get a bit of weeding done myself today, as well as cleaning up the purple fountain grass and planting a bed of Caladiums a friends gave me. WooHoo! A little bit each day. That's my motto.

Watch the "Weeding...." video Now!




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Problems using Doppler and our feeds?

Something to be aware of, if you use Doppler with a FeedBurner created RSS feed.

I have had several Doppler users email me recently that they were unable to access my feed for Career-Op. I thought perhaps there were some errors in the RSS, and their were some minor ones, but after installing Doppler here and seeing the error logs, it appeared to be something much worse. After a bit of tinkering, I have found the problem and reported it to FeedBurner.

If you have "Feed item link clicks (clickthrough tracking)" turned on in your FB feed, it re-writes the link URLs to something like http://feeds.feedburner.com/career?m=402. This allows them to collect clickthroughs on each post.

Unfortunately. Doppler sees this URL as an error and refuses to download any items.

Turning off this feature, restores their ability to receive the files, though. I am disabling it in all my FB feeds until the issue is resolved. You can find this option by clicking on the Standard Stats button along the left side of your "Analyze" page on FeedBurner.

Just a heads up in case you were being denied your regular dose of Career Opportunities and didn't know why? (SMILE)

Saturday, April 29, 2006

What I'm Reading...In A Mexican Garden

In a Mexican Garden: courtyards, pools and open-air living rooms
Gina Hyams, Melba Levick, Photographer

Gorgeous photograph of all aspects of Mexican homes and gardens. I especially liked the outdoor bathrooms with all their tile or rough stone.

Sure to generate lots of ideas for your own home and garden.

Link: Previous mentions of books

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Friday, April 28, 2006

Join Douglas' LinkedIn Network



I am not a big fan of the business or social networking tools available on the web, but I recently got involved in the LinkedIn community. If you would like to join my network, send an invite, via the LinkedIn web site, todouglas@welchwrite.com

Please let me know that you are a reader or listener of A Gardener's Notebook, so I can immediately add you the network.

Be Well! -- Douglas

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Event: 3rd Annual Alt Build: Alternative building materials and design



3rd Annual Alt Build: Alternative building materials and design

Thursday, May 4th, 2006
11am-6pm
3021 Airport Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90405

Free/$5 parking

Over 100 exhibits will feature manufacturers of green building materials, landscape and water conservation products, retialers, interior design products and furnishings, utility companies, non-profit organizations and city and state agencies.

Free seminars throughout the day - featuring Favid Johnston, James Mary O'Connor and Lili Singer as keynote speakers.

Link: Seminar Schedule
Link: Maps/Directions

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Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Roses, weeds, blackspot and the Great Potato Book - April 25, 2006

Listen to the Podcast


Here are some links to information mentioned in the podcast:


Email from Maurice Cuellar...

After listening to your podcast on April 5th, I was inspired to start a website of my own.

publicfruit.com

It allows users to map their fruit trees interactively. They just log on, type an address, and thats it. They can map their neighborhood trees.

Let me know what you think as I just started this a few days ago.

Maurice


I'd love to hear what's going on in your garden. Post your comments here or email them to agn@welchwrite.com.

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If you find this podcast helpful, please leave a donation for the author.

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Event: Gardens of the Roman World - The Getty Villa

Lectures and Conferences

Gardens of the Roman World
Thursday May 18, 2006
8 pm
Auditorium, Getty Villa

Patrick Bowe, noted expert on garden history and author of Gardens of the Roman World, will examine the ancient Roman obsession with gardens, which were cultivated throughout the empire, from Britain to North Africa and from Portugal to Asia Minor. Using as evidence actual gardens excavated at Pompeii and other ancient sites, he will discuss the intimate and accessible aspects of Roman gardening, including such details as fountains, statuary, trelliswork, and plantings, which are still reflected in city, suburban, and country gardens today.

Reservations available beginning April 25.

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Monday, April 17, 2006

The Great Potato Book and potato memories

A serendipitous look though the sorting shelves at my local library led me to The Great Potato Book, which can only be described as raising food fetishism to a new height. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing.

Beautifully photographed and printed on glossy stock, The Great Potato Book presents the humble potato’s history, recipes and an index of potato varieties you have probably never seen. Each description offers appropriate users for the particular variety as well as possible substitutions if you can’t find a certain type in your area. Several recipes caught my eye immediately, including the Italian Potato Pie, Potato-Onion Focaccua and Bacon-Potato Cake.

If I were a collector of food books, The Great Potato Book would certainly find its way onto my bookshelves, or more likely, onto my coffee table, since it is so beautifully designed. Of course, owning this book would make it clear to all your friends that your truly are a “foodie” to the highest degree. For the gardener’s among us, the book gives us images of perfection to strive for in your own garden. You may never reach such heights, but it is always good to have something for which to strive.

Despite its glossiness, the book brought back some pleasant memories of planting and harvesting potatoes with my grandma, many years ago. She planted a half-acre of garden until she was well into her 70’s and taught me most everything I know about gardening.

Each year we would take seed potatoes left over from the previous year and cut them into sections, each containing an eye, These were loaded into peck baskets made of wicker and carried out to the back of her property, where the garden existed. The soil would have been prepared until it was deep and soft, and a dark, chocolate brown. We would then create a long straight row, using the ancient hand cultivator that seemed to belong to a previous century. It looked like a miniature plow with a large metal wheel at the front and wheelbarrow-like handles at the rear. Each of us would then heft a basket and begin walking down the row, dropping potatoes at regular intervals, then stepping on each one to seat it in the soil. Then we would carefully “hill up” each row, giving the new potatoes plenty of room to grow.

Later in the Summer, and into the cold Fall, we would make regular trips out to the garden to gather potatoes for our usual Sunday family supper. It was always amazing to put the garden fork into a seemingly dead part of the garden and turn up a hidden bounty.
Despite the typical attacks of potato bugs, dry weather, wet weather and more, I have no memory of Grandma ever buying potatoes. I guess her garden, and her gardening knowledge, made it relatively easy to provide more than enough for everyone.

Food as fetish, food as art and food as memory. Any book that can serve in all these ways is certainly worth a look.

Link: The Great Potato Book by Florence Fabricant, Forward by Charlie Trotter, Photography by Richard Blair
Related: Previous mentions of potatoes, cooking



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Thursday, April 13, 2006

Channeling water and California Natives

Pink Wildflower 2The Los Angeles Times has 2 striking pieces today on preserving the water that falls into your gardens and the native flowers that are currently bursting forth in the mountains.

I was just thinking about a way to make use of the sunniest part of my property, the driveway. It seems such a waste to not use this small expanse of concrete so I got to thinking that perhaps I could grow some low-lying herbs in the middle of the driveway which you would simply drive over when you came home each night. Of course, you could go all out, like the homeowner in this article.

The first piece is "Channeling the raindrops" by Emily Green, where she details a project changing her concrete driveway into a series of water collection basins.
"MY frontyard looked like a storybook American home — a lavender-lined front walk, two oaks, grass paths, a driveway to the side — but it was a textbook polluter. The gutter fed directly to the concrete driveway. This swept rain straight from the gutter, onto the driveway, into the street.

Rain, it turns out, is only pure until it hits the street. The minute it rolls off our properties, it becomes what engineers call storm water — a toxic soup of water, pesticides, fertilizers, motor oil, cigarette butts, fast-food wrappers, batteries and dog droppings. During a rainy day, as much as 10 billion gallons of this urban concoction floods out of 65 outfalls into the Santa Monica and San Pedro bays, says Joyce Amaro from the City of Los Angeles Stormwater Program.It could not be a more complete perversion of the natural cycle, in which April showers feed lakes and springs, and are absorbed into the groundwater supply, or as the watery intelligentsia prefer, the aquifer."
[Continues]


The other article is "The wildflower bunch" by Hugo Martin. Here he details some of the great characters who find wildflowers, and their protection, an all consuming passion.
"The man striding purposefully up the trail above Agoura Hills could be Clint Eastwood, what with his sharp nose and squinting blue eyes. He even wields a sharp object menacingly as he scans the terrain.

But the lone figure in the wilderness is no high-plains drifter. He is amateur botanist David Ecklund, a 60-year-old Vietnam veteran, and his weapon of choice is a common garden hoe. The enemy: "invasive nonnative" plants that are crowding out native wildflowers"
[Continues]

Link: Previous mentions of wildflowers
Link: Wildflower photos in my AGN Flickr Set
Link: Books on California Wildflowers

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Monday, April 10, 2006

AnimalBytes: Reality In Blue - Solar Eclipse Turkey 2006

My good friend, Keri Dearborn, has started her very own blog about all things nature and natural. You may remember Keri from our birdwatching video posted a few months ago.

You can also see her work on the Friends of the Island Fox blog.

I expect great things from this blog and I have already added her RSS feed to my RSS Newsreader program.
Reality In Blue - Solar Eclipse Turkey 2006

March 29, 2006, a solar eclipse dazzled over Turkey. A dark orb hung in the sky haloed in glowing white wisps of solar corona. Crowds gazing up from the dark shadow of the moon found the sun blocked from view and cheered at the wondrous sight. For those who took a moment to glance at the surrounding ancient ruins and countryside, there was the realization that a total solar eclipse offers an alternative perception of the world. For as the moon blocks our vision of the sun, it also blocks direct light from our star and thereby introduces us to an image of our world we would not ordinarily see. [Continues]

(Via AnimalBytes.)

Link: Video - Sepulveda Wildlife Area Bird Walk
Link: Friends of the Island Fox

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Saturday, April 08, 2006

Guerilla gardeners attack London

Will someone please tell these folks about my benighted patch of dirt here in Van Nuys? Please? Surely there has to be a cheap airfare somewhere. Right?

Blooming street craze that leaves authorities seeing green - Britain - Times Online

By Will Pavia

IT IS the latest gang to explode in the concrete canyons of South London, bringing not knives, nor drugs, nor guns — but plants.

They congregate at night beside roundabouts and road junctions, armed with trowels and spades.

The authorities say there is little they can do to stop the rapidly expanding guerrilla movement from planting every neglected patch of soil with rows of hyacinths, rosemary and Day-Glo primulas, tidying up afterwards and returning regularly to water and weed. [Continues]


Link: Previous Post on Guerilla Gardening
Link: AGN Column on Guerilla Gardening

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Wednesday, April 05, 2006

A bout with bronchitis, fallen fruit, aphids and more - April 5, 2006

Listen to the Podcast


Here are some links to information mentioned in the podcast:


I'd love to hear what's going on in your garden. Post your comments here or email them to agn@welchwrite.com.

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If you find this podcast helpful, please leave a donation for the author.