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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