Cut Your Grass

Apparently I'm not the only one in Pasadena who wants to kill my grass. The big room at the Pasadena Convention Center was packed last Saturday for Pasadena Water and Power's "Cut Your Grass" workshop. The morning was led by the energetic Tim Wheeler, horticulturalist extraordinaire, who I remembered from an irrigation workshop I attended a couple of years ago.

Well, damn. Two years. It's been that long and I still have the most terrifying back yard on the block.

Tim can keep a crowd interested for three full hours. He's knowledgeable, dynamic and fun. He can answer almost any (relevant) question you put to him. It was a fascinating workshop and they're going to have another one August 20th (keep your eyes on Pasadena In Focus). And watch PWP's website August first for information about financial incentives for killing your grass.

But I'll never make it by August first. I'm beginning to think I won't make it at all. Yes, I want to kill my grass--which is not grass, but weeds--but once I do that I have to remove the dead stuff, and once I do that I can't just leave the dirt, I have to plant something, or put in a hardscape or a pergola or something, and it's a big yard, and all that takes planning and effort and labor and moneymoneymoney and I'm just overwhelmed. I have no idea where to start.

I want someone else to do it.

Hahamongna Blog Day

Counselors from Tom Sawyer Camp set up a learning center on the shore of a natural lake at Hahamongna Watershed Park (click to enlarge).

This Monday, July 12th, Pasadena's City Council will discuss and probably decide once and for all whether or not to build soccer fields in Hahamongna Watershed Park.

One field is planned for the location pictured above. This natural lake fills with the spring floods, then slowly dries out in summer. It provides habitat for coyotes, bobcats, ducks, swallows, rabbits, ground squirrels, toads, egrets and herons. These are the animals I've observed there.

Soccer is more popular than ever before. Yet the City Council recently voted millions in budget cuts, affecting salaries and city services. Caught between this rock and that hard place, what's the City Council to do?

We have alternatives. Vacant lots and little-used playing fields all over town lie waiting to be repurposed. There's no need to spend millions during a recession to fill in a lake and build unsustainable soccer fields in a flood plain when we have access to other, more appropriate land.

In almost every issue of Pasadena In Focus, the city's useful and effective newsletter to citizens, we're urged to reuse and recycle. Repurposing unused lots is recycling on a grand scale. Let's use land that's already flat, already outside the flood plain and all ready to be played on, to make financially and environmentally sustainable soccer fields for Pasadena.

If you'd like to email your council member, you can do so here. And thank you.

Today several bloggers have teamed up to talk about why we think Hahamongna Watershed Park isn't the place for athletic fields. Please visit all the blogs (and one website!) participating in Hahamongna Blog Day:
Altadena Above It All
Altadena Hiker
Arroyo Lover
A Thinking Stomach
Avenue to the Sky
East of Allen
Finnegan Begin Again
Go Deep...Find Truth
Greensward Civitas
LA Creek Freak
Mendolonium
Mister Earl's Musings
My Life With Tommy
Pasadena 91105 and Beyond
Pasadena Adjacent
Pasadena Latina
SaveHahamongna.org
Selvage
Temple City Daily Photo
The Sky Is Big In Pasadena
Webster's Fine Stationers Web Log
West Coast Grrlie Blather

My thanks to Barbara Ellis and Karin Bugge for helping put Hahamongna Blog Day together.

Thank You, Ann

If you've been visiting Pasadena Daily Photo this week you may have wondered, "who is this illustrious Public Information Officer, this Ann Erdman person, and why is she in Palm Springs?" (The question I've been asking myself is, where's Linda Centell? She's my neighbor and I haven't seen her all week.)

I should have coordinated with Ann; it's not her fault I chose the week of her vacation to post my City Hall photos. She has every right to take a vacation, and Linda is perfectly capable of serving as Acting PIO for a week.

Here's a list of a few of the things Ann does as Pasadena's Public Information Officer (and what Linda's been doing in her absence):

--writes Pasadena In Focus, the newsletter received in every Pasadena household, telling us what's going on in town. (A joint effort. Ann tells me Linda is the "world's greatest editor.")
--prepares and distributes news releases and answers media inquiries.
--oversees all programming on 55KPAS, Pasadena's local cable TV station.
--develops and sells City Hall souvenirs. (I have the tote bag.)

The rest I quote from Ann's job description: The Public Information Office "...produces brochures, leaflets, flyers, posters, ads and other literature; plans press conferences; promotes special events; provides media relations and public relations counsel to city departments; and oversees the information kiosk at Pasadena City Hall..."

As if that weren't enough, Ann has received accolades and awards for putting together The Pasadena Follies, where city officials have a chance to make fun of themselves for a good cause.

She's won the hearts and minds of the local blogging community (and there are a lot of us) not just by answering our questions, which is part of her job description, but by being our friend, which is not.

Ann is also a blogger. Check her out at Pasadena PIO. And you can follow her on Twitter. She even found time to give me a friendly tour of the "inner sanctum" at City Hall.

I think a vacation is allowed.