I recently came upon this article in the Los Angeles Times, which documents a court battle between a young couple and the city of Orange, CA. The essence of the battle? The couple have removed their water guzzling front lawn, which, apparently, contravenes a city ordinance which requires that all front yards be covered by at least 40% vegetation.
The article includes a photo of the couple’s yard, which admittedly isn’t the most attractive I’ve ever seen, but neither is it an eyesore. They haven’t littered it with carcasses of dead refrigerators, couches and Buicks, or with any other detritus, for that matter. It’s clean, neat, and weed-free, albeit a bit sterile looking for my tastes.
But here’s the crux of the matter. This is southern California. It’s not like the area has an excess of fresh water. Heaven knows they’ve been eyeballing Canadian rivers for some time now in anticipation of their fresh-water needs. This is also a state which is at the forefront of environmental legislation when it comes to automotive emissions. Now, granted, they don’t do much to actually reduce the amount people drive; they’re more inclined just to limit the emissions output of their choked freeways.
But still, one would expect that, at some point, local and state governments would be encouraged to conserve water. Nevada knows its in a desert. Why don’t Californians? Xeriscaping anyone?
Perhaps this story hit a nerve for me because a number of years ago I wiped out my front lawn and replaced it with other forms of vegetation that didn’t require constant water and attention. I’m biased, of course, but I think it looks better than the lawn did. I’ve watered trees when I first planted them to get them established, and I might water them again once or twice a summer if conditions become particularly arid, but otherwise everything thrives on neglect.
This move, together with installing a front-loading wash machine and dual-flush toilets has reduced our water consumption drastically. I know I live in a desert. People of Orange, California, get with the program. So do you.
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March 4th, 2010
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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Everyone!
A few years ago, when I started this blog, my intention was to compose regular updates as things happened and then, at Christmas or New Years, simply send out greetings and point folks to those blog entries to let them know what had happened over the past year. Yeah, you can see how well that has worked!
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After the Dig
The Deobald Hacienda – December 23, 2009
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Considering that I haven’t done an update in quite a while, here are some highlights from the past two or so years …
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December 24th, 2009
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With the last shopping day before Christmas upon us, no doubt many are still out there scrambling to purchase those last presents. At our age, though, the idea of what constitutes a gift shifts away from the commercial, so we are proposing a different sort of gift exchange to our friends and family.
Last year I set up a recipes site so that we could have a place to store and share recipes. We would like to invite all our friends and family to consider contributing one or more of your favourite recipes to the site. If you are interested:
- This link will take you directly to the account creation screen. You just need to enter a username and a valid email address.
- The site will email you a password which you can use to log into the site (you can change this to something more memorable later, if you like)
- Return to the site and log in
- Once you do that, you will see a menu option in the upper, right-hand corner to “Add a Recipe”
- At the next screen, click on “Recipe”
If, when you are adding a recipe, you run out of space for ingredients, just save what you have done, and then return to the recipe to edit it. More ingredients fields will have been added.
BTW, feel free to use this site at any time to store as many recipes as you want. I find that by putting them here at least I can find them. No more searching through cookbooks.
Thanks for thinking of us!
In exchange we offer up some of our family favourites:
- Carrot Ring – This one was handed down to us by Irene’s mom a number of years back, and it has become a staple whenever there’s a bird in the oven. If you don’t have a ring mould, I’m sure you can adapt.
- Family Waffles – I like this one for its simplicity (no beating and folding egg whites here) and the size of the batch. If you want to feed the family waffles for Christmas breakfast, this will certainly fill the bill.
- Kansas City Rib Rub – This summer, when pork ribs were cheap like borscht, this one saw a lot of use. It may not be practical to do slow BBQ in this weather, but save it for when the snow disappears.
Merry Christmas to all.
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December 24th, 2009
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When you reach a certain age, you just don’t have to pull punches any more. I laughed until my throat was sore.
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November 29th, 2008
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Despite all its physical grandeur, the Taj is, after all, a tomb. That diminishes it somehow for me. Temples are, or were, living places of worship; forts protected and sustained life and carved a place for themselves in history; the Taj is a grave. No one ever lived in the Taj Mahal, no battles were ever fought there; and the course of history was never altered by its construction.
Call it a monument to love, if you will, but I call it a monument to megalomania and narcissism, one man’s attempt to fend off mortality by building an edifice so grand that countless generations would speak his – and his wife’s – names. Remember, too, Mumtaz Mahal wasn’t Shah Jihan’s only wife; she was just his third, and favourite, wife.
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July 18th, 2008
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The road to Agra was nothing short of a marvel, a place where the 21st Century and the Middle Ages roll along side by side.
That’s the thing about India; just when I would think that I was beyond surprise, India would smack me upside the head with some stunner that forced me to confess, “Didn’t see that one in the tea leaves.”
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July 17th, 2008
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By this time the trip had begun to take on that If-this-is-Tuesday-then-this-must-be-Delhi vibe. Even though the last couple of days had involved less of the frenetic hop-scotching from one monument to another, the rigors of traveling at least every other day, along with some persistent digestive issues that Irene and I continued to suffer from, were taking their toll. I doubt that even as an anal-retentive toddler, I ever paid such close attention to the machinations of my lower digestive tract.
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July 16th, 2008
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In essence, the backwaters of Kerala are river deltas that have, over many years, been contained by man-made sea walls to form a series of canals, some large, others very small. Rather like a rural, tropical Venice.
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July 15th, 2008
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I felt certain that these photos would emerge at some later date to bite me in the ass, perhaps at my retirement or my funeral. I can hear the eulogist now, “Cal was not only adventurous, but also fun-loving. Why, here he is in India riding on the back of an elephant.” This narrative would, of course, be accompanied by one of those tragic Powerpoint slide shows, the type which I have railed against in my years as a teacher, each slide with a different, senseless transition; some annoying inappropriate noise; and, alas, some spinning text.
The things I do for my wife.
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July 14th, 2008
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After a while, however, I noticed one or two of these hanging sacks stir and unfurl slightly. They weren’t birds’ nests; they were bats, huge frigging bats. They were so big that they bent the branches on which they were hanging. I haven’t yet been able to determine the exact species, but lying on our backs in the pool at night, Steven and I watched them fly overhead and estimated their wing span to be at least two feet, probably more.
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July 13th, 2008
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We were tempted to stay watching the elephant for a long time, especially since it made our guide, Mr. Timid, absolutely squirm. Apparently, he had been attacked by a bull elephant while on his motor cycle very recently, so he was particularly averse to being in the company of the beast.
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July 12th, 2008
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Essentially, flying the few hundred kilometers from Pune to Cochin, two provinces to the south, equates to travelling to an entirely different country. In most ways, Kerala shares less with Maharashtra than Canada shares with the U.S. From Pune to Cochin, almost all aspects of culture – language, religion, cuisine, dress and government – undergo significant shifts.
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July 11th, 2008
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In the middle of the night last night, I momentarily entertained the smug thought that my digestive system had survived pretty well so far on the trip, and that, actually, I had probably been more regular here than in Canada. Big mistake. Not five minutes later Fate decided to bitch-slap my hubris with an intestinal tornado that had me out of commission for the better part of eighteen hours.
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July 10th, 2008
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Those of you who have “endured” lengthy Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox weddings can rest easy. You ain’t seen nothing until you’ve been to a Hindu wedding.
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July 7th, 2008
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