Wednesday, July 7, 2021

Liz Writes Life 7-7-21 -- More than 12 cannabis are illegal

Liz Writes Life

July 7, 2021

Thorny issue

The Shasta Valley Lava Fire has certainly caused more bias and calls of racism, which is frustrating. I just wish news reporters (and others) would refer to the massive greenhouses growing marijuana as “illegal,” because that is the correct adjective for the illegal greenhouses that burned in Shasta Vista area. Siskiyou County’s ordinance allows for the “legal” growing of 12 cannabis plants. If more than 12 plants are growing in any area, it is a “criminal” activity and should be referred to as such. If you question the situation, you need to ask Siskiyou Co. Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue. Or, count the burned cannabis plants inside the wildfire- burned greenhouses that can be witnessed in published photos.

More Garden, but no peril

The soaker hoses seem to be doing their job. With this terrible heat, I have been hand-irrigating some plants a second time each day. It doesn’t take much for the pumpkins, zucchinis and an Echinacea to get weepy in mid-afternoon. But, I now have four different lines of soaker hoses going off in night time and spend only about a half-hour each morning doing supplemental irrigation. Yay! The other six hoses are hand-timers; three need to go off every day and three every-other day – and I can get that done easily enough.

Last week, I made bigger water bowels around the pumpkins, tomatoes and zucchini; then weeded and made trenches on both sides of the eight cantaloupe and seven cucumbers. After doing this, I added manure and bark mulch to all the plants. Boy, it looked great! The bark mulch was over a year old, because I didn’t use it last year. I also added the mulch to several flower beds, including the one by the house with cosmos that are 10-inches tall. They should reach four-feet by mid-August, when they really put out the blooms.

Surprisingly, I feel like I was able to keep up with all that needed to be done in May and June, while the plants were getting their roots. Some years, it has seemed like I was always behind.

Before the end of June, I decided to dig the garlic out of the ground. Hadn’t watered for a week and the soil was getting hard. My shovel did ding five garlics, but ended up with 25 nice big bulbs. Guess the one dose of sulfate-of-potash and fertilizing several times did the trick! Gardening advice says to dry them in a cool dry place. Well, no place is cool right now, so I put them in two paper grocery bags and brought them into the house. So far, my bedroom doesn’t smell too garlicy!

Summer flowers are starting to bloom. Humming birds and bees are happy sipping on the red-crowned bee balm (five-feet tall) and pink or red hollyhocks. Volunteer rose campions are blooming on the fence line and anywhere that I didn’t dig them up. But, they are a happy bright companion to the small daisy-like, but tall fever few – that are also volunteer. The orange daylilies popped open just before July and the large Shasta Daisies are just getting started. I keep forgetting to mention the begonias are doing just ok. They get shade from the pine tree in the afternoon, which is good, and I am trying to fertilize them more often, but they take their time growing big. They do have blooms, so I shouldn’t complain.

Congressman LaMalfa

Our CA. Dist. 1 Congressman, Doug LaMalfa, continues to advocate for wildfire reform. During the past five years, his district has been hit hard by wildfires like the November Camp Fire that destroyed the City of Paradise, to hundreds of homes and business lost by fires attacking the City of Redding, and then the loss of much of Happy Camp on the Klamath River in Siskiyou County last September.

Last week, LaMalfa issued the following statement to influence U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration:

“Extreme environmentalists have weaponized the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act and are using frivolous lawsuits to block nearly every forest thinning project or salvage sale that the U.S. Forest Service proposes. As President Biden begins his discussions on how to address wildfires, I urge him to focus on litigation reform as we desperately need that for proper forest management.

“The decline of responsible timber harvesting and the lack of active management have created overstocked forests. This decline has resulted in the closure of the majority of California’s lumber mills, thus eliminating the very tools needed to help get our overgrown forests under control. We need a sustained commitment to decades of increased thinning to bring our western forests back to the majestic jewels they were at the turn of the 20th century. Until everyone, regardless of party, gets serious about fixing our broken forest management, we will continue to see catastrophic fires.”

LaMalfa added that over 68 million acres burned in the last decade and over 10 million acres burned in 2020 alone in western United States.

 

LaMalfa issued another statement after he voted against the House Democrats partisan infrastructure package, H.R. 3684, the “Investing in a New Vision for the Environment and Surface Transportation in America Act.” He said he voted against the bill, because the legislation will spend $548 billion during the next five years. Half of that – about $276 billion – will be spent fulfilling the goals of the Green New Deal. As a result, the Highway Account, which collects gas taxes to pay for road and bridge projects across the U.S. could go bankrupt within two years!

Apparently, significant funds will not be going where they should – like pouring concrete and pavement to improve infrastructure of roads and bridges. Yep, I agree with our congressman.

May peace and calm be with you this week. Smile – just cuz it makes you feel better!

Liz Bowen began writing ranch and farm news, published in newspapers, in 1976. She is a native of Siskiyou County and lives near Callahan. Columns from the past can be found at: lizwriteslife.blogspot.com. Call her at 530-467-3515.

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