Posts Tagged ‘Southern California’

Wild par­rots now abound in South­ern California

Oh, I love these guys! Every­time I see a flock or hear their wild screech­ing I am taken to the trop­ics. I finally decided to get some infor­ma­tion on these green aliens by search­ing the inter­net. Accord­ing to The Cal­i­for­nia Par­rot Project: “par­rots are an increas­ingly famil­iar sight in many urban areas in the south­ern United States, hav­ing become estab­lished from escaped or released birds that were imported for the pet trade.….….” They also address the fact that these par­rots are non-​native:

“We take no posi­tion on the desir­abil­ity of main­tain­ing par­rot pop­u­la­tions in the state (nor those of intro­duced euca­lyp­tus, palms, trout or turkeys). Par­rots are symp­to­matic of the expan­sion of urban habi­tats dom­i­nated by non-​native plants; they also illus­trate the capac­ity of humans to move wildlife around the planet for eco­nomic, social or aes­thetic rea­sons.” In other words, they’re here to stay, they’ve suc­cess­fully adapted and since they are endan­gered in their nat­ural habi­tats, maybe they can sur­vive among us.

For more infor­ma­tion: www​.cal​i​for​nia​parrot​pro​ject​.org/ and ama​zo​nia​.us/​h​o​m​e​.​h​tml

On the web: Sat­ur­day, ⁹⁄₁₈: Tara Kolla of Sil­ver Lake Farms leads a hands-​on work­shop on build­ing a bet­ter gar­den from the ground up. 10 a.m. to noon. Hunt­ing­ton Library, Art Col­lec­tions and Botan­i­cal Gar­dens, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino. $40 to $50. Reg­is­tra­tion: (626) 405‑2128.

My office

One mil­lion of some­thing is an inter­est­ing con­cept. 1,000,000 used to be a lot of money, a lot of peo­ple, a lot of cars! For­tu­nately, it’s still a lot of “hits”, or vis­its to a web­site. SoCal​Nurs​ery​Plants​.com just reached 1,000,000 hits — yes, there are ways to track these things — and I’ve been wait­ing to see this num­ber for the last few weeks. Inter­est­ingly enough, I also have 627 sub­scribers on today, 6/​27 — syn­chronoc­ity!

I feel for­tu­nate in that there is no other place in the world where this web­site would flour­ish like it does in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, with a large pop­u­la­tion of gar­den­ers, many gar­dens and nurs­eries and year around grow­ing sea­son. I’m also lucky that I have some­thing to say twice a week, and the skills to say it with. (High school jour­nal­ism comes in handy!) I’m no spring chicken either, and I’ve had to learn a lot about com­put­ers, soft­ware and pho­tog­ra­phy. So take heart if you want to rein­vent your­self — if I can do it, so can you!

A mon­ster at Ran­cho Soledad Nurs­ery in Ran­cho Santa Fe

Sur­vey­ing the nurs­eries of Orange and San Diego Coun­ties so I could add them to Socal​nurs​ery​plants​.com was a labor of love. I couldn’t have done it with­out my GPS. It would have been nice to take a cou­ple of weeks to do it instead of just 5 days, which were bro­ken up by dri­ving home every night…except for one. That one was spent in La Jolla, a relax­ing respite. I look for­ward to vis­it­ing and revis­it­ing nurs­eries all over South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. I espe­cially appre­ci­ate any help you give me find­ing the ones I may have missed. And I will con­tinue to delve into the magic and mys­tique of gar­den­ing in our unique cli­mate.

• Click to see my slide show video
  of the var­ied and inter­est­ing nurs­eries of Orange and San Diego Counties.

My heart is in the garden.….….

This is a bird­bath at Green Gar­dens Nurs­ery in San Diego, a delight­ful lit­tle jewel .

www​.SDGreen​Gar​dens​.com