The First Mantilija Poppy

A few years ago, I planted a mantilija poppy out in the front of the house.  If you're familiar with this spectacular plant, you'll know that if the mantilija likes where you've planted it, pretty soon you'll have LOTS of little mantilijas arriving via root runners.  Then you're in for a show when the dessert plate-sized papery white blossoms all burst out in bloom.  Beautiful.  And the bees love 'em.  Here's the first flower to show up, so far.  As you can see, there's other buds waiting in the wings.

Your Easter Poem

This subtle, profoundly haunting poem by Carl Dennis is an apt one for a season of resurrrection and rebirth.

New Year's Eve

However busy you are, you should still reserve
One evening a year for thinking about your double,
The man who took the curve on Conway Road
Too fast, given the icy patches that night,
But no faster than you did; the man whose car
When it slid through the shoulder
Happened to strike a girl walking alone
From a neighbor's party to her parents' farm,
While your car struck nothing more notable
Than a snowbank.

One evening for recalling how soon you transformed
Your accident into a comic tale
Told first at a body shop, for comparing
That hour of pleasure with his hour of pain
At the house of the stricken parents, and his many
Long afternoons at the Lutheran graveyard.

If nobody blames you for assuming your luck
Has something to do with your character,
Don't blame him for assuming that his misfortune
Is somehow deserved, that justice would be undone
If his extra grief was balanced later
By a portion of extra joy.

Lucky you, whose personal faith has widened
To include an angel assigned to protect you
From the usual outcome of heedless moments.
But this evening consider the angel he lives with,
The stern enforcer who drives the sinners
Out of the Garden with a flaming sword
And locks the gate.

RWQCB Hearing on Los Osos Sewer Project

The following is information on the upcoming Regional Water Quality Control Board hearing on the Sewer Project. The meeting will be at their Aerovista offices in SLOTOWN.

Central Coast Water Board staff has recently posted its May 5, 2011 Water Board Agenda. The agenda can be found here...

http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/centralcoast/board_info/agendas/2011/may/May_agenda.shtml


The Proposed Los Osos Water Recycling Facility Waste Discharge Requirements Order No. R3-2011-0001 can be found at Agenda No. 13. The link is active and will direct you to the following documents or select the following link.

http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/centralcoast/board_info/agendas/2011/may/Item_13/index.shtml


1) Staff Report (includes public comments and staff responses)
2) The proposed Water Discharge Requirements as well as the Monitoring and Reporting Program,
3) Central Coast Standard Provisions
4) Modifications and Updates from Waste Discharge Order Nos. Order R3-2003-0007 to Order No. R3-2011-0001
5) San Luis Obispo County Counsel letter responding to The Citizens for a Sustainable Community's request for additional environmental review.
6) Public Comments

Thank you,

I Get Paid For Everything Twice!

Ron Crawford's been looking everywhere -- high, low, up, down -- poring through piles of documents, looking, looking, looking and at last he's found him:  The Author of the SOC for the disasterous Tri-W sewer plant in the middle of town.  Yup.  And, boy, has that guy got some 'splaining to do.  Somebody call Sarah Wan! Somebody call the cops!  I want my money back!  At http://www.sewerwatch.blogspot.com/

The Mud Oven Bear Gets Colorized!

When last we left Oso Happy, the mud oven bear ,which was built by Jordan and Meleah of Ncredible Edibles Sustainable Solutions, plus a whole lot of happy volunteers who gathered at Los Osos Valley Nursery to do the deed, he was, well, mud colored and sitting on a greyish stucco base.  Well, now he's coated and texurized and colorized and ready for spring and a whole year of baking pizzas and bread and all manner of goodies in his tummy oven.