Chaparral Wisdom
To celebrate the magic and beauty of Nature & the chaparral
Create a Native Wildflower/Shrubland Ecosystem in Your Yard
Most people love the idea of creating a native wildflower meadow in their yard.
There’s one primary problem, however, that often defeats the process – non-native weeds and grasses.
The criminals? Some registered offenders include bur clover, with those nasty, little coiled balls; Bromus, with its foxtail-like stickers that find their way into your socks and dog’s ears; filaree, with corkscrew seeds that wind through clothing and into the fur of your pets. These invasive species are everywhere because they’ve adapted to soil disturbance and the semi-arid Mediterranean climate that characterizes California.
Clear an area, throw out native plant seeds, wait in anticipation, and before long, the entire area is filled with nasty things that seem to cover the ground over night.
Fortunately, there’s hope. And we think we have found a successful recipe, at least for our corner of the world in northern San Diego County. Patience and perseverance is required.
We have successfully restored about a quarter acre of suburban yardom to a fully functioning native habitat with nesting birds, native bees, harvester ants, and a new surprises discovered weekly. Here’s how we did it.
KEY POINTS
A. DO NOT DISTURB THE SOIL by turning it over, as is the usual agrarian approach to growing things. Keep the soil crust intact. If it’s loose, watering and walking on it a bit will help start the restoration process. You could also use one of those water filled rollers people employ to smooth the ground prior to planting a lawn.
B. DO NOT USE MULCH. Covering the soil with mulch will prevent a healthy soil crust from forming and can facilitate weed growth.
Protecting Nature from Cal Fire
An update on the lawsuit we filed in January against Cal Fire and the California Board of Forestry to stop the clearance of 250,000 acres of habitat per year.
Lawsuit
We have a pre-settlement hearing scheduled with the Board’s attorneys in about two weeks. It’s the first step in the legal process – to attempt to reach an agreement between parties prior to beginning the courtroom drama. At this point it is impossible to predict what will happen, but we remain hopeful as always. We have been joined by four wonderful co-litigants: Endangered Habitats League, Sequoia ForestKeeper, Los Angeles Audubon, and Friends of Harbors, Beaches, and Parks.
One fundamental issue is to get Cal Fire to apply what they acknowledged in the first half of their Environmental Impact Report (EIR) to the action portion of their program. Namely, that chaparral is threatened by too much fire.
Granite Sometimes Becomes Gneiss
After spending four days in the wilderness of the Anza-Borrego Desert, we returned to a world that had turned to chaos – schools closed, roads empty, and everyone in quarantine from the Corona Virus. We should have just stayed out there.
But since we’re back, we thought we’d share some of our discoveries – one of which was that the desert’s arid shrublands, although beautiful, can be seen as mere decoration. It’s the plutonics that center stage – igneous rocks cooked deep underground.
Formed when the Farallon Plate was diving under the North American Plate (beginning about 170 million years ago), all shapes and forms of granite and granite-like rock were created from molten earth five miles deep. At times, reheating and extreme subterranean pressure transformed it all into beautiful, defoliated gneiss. At other times, cracks or weak areas filled with crystalline minerals of quartz, feldspar, and mica. Exposed to the surface after millions of years of erosion, decomposition sets in – it rusts, it crumbles, it’s turned to sand.
