Silent Spring? Try, a too-early Spring for California. Also, a quick update on the leather work.

What with climate change and a drought, Spring sprung in California in early January.  However, that just means that the time between January and April is fraught with chaos: we may get no rain, and highs into the 70's for a couple of weeks, to be replaced, overnight, by three days of precipitation in which we get 5 inches of rain; or, we may instead get visited by a cold snap into the 20's for ten straight days.  Of course, we could get days and days of deep, thick fog.  Or a wind that blows everything dry as toast and lights Southern California ablaze...

It means that planting times really don't change all that much due to the weirdness of the jet stream and pressure ridges.  Just don't talk yourself into a false sense of security about an earlier planting time.

But they do change due to a warming climate.

This graph from the US Environmental Protection Agency, for example, shows that the average length of the growing season in the U.S. has increased by nearly two weeks during the 20th Century.  And this animation by the Arbor Day Foundation shows the shift in hardiness zones in the U.S. in one decade.

The California portion of that map just barely covers it, since California has so many climate zones and microclimates.  It is interesting to note the creep of hardiness zone ten inland from the coast... also, keep in mind that California is in a drought now approaching four years long, and well past the data of that hardiness zone map.

For our region, it means watching our plants bloom and leaf early, and then hope for enough water while dreading the dramatic shifts in temperature that tend to come with our precipitation.  You see, the lion's share of California's water is supposed to arrive in the form of snow blanketing the Sierra Nevada (which is right now at about 25% of its average for snowpack, a terrible irony if you look up the meaning of its name). But, blooming fruit trees are especially susceptible to damage from hail and freezing.

If we only get our precipitation from what people are now calling "atmospheric rivers", but what we used to call pineapple expresses, we get a LOT of rain, but warmer rain.  In a typical year, that could mean a really bad rain-on-snow event, leading to flooding.  However, with no snow, at this time we are hoping for just about anything.

Sadly, the warmer weather also brings out the nasties -- in our case, mosquitoes, ticks and fleas.  Yea.  Even worse, a longer hot season will mean more West Nile virus-carrying mosquitoes, which is only a small trouble for people, but may potentially lead to the extinction of our endemic yellow-billed magpie, as well as wreak havoc on multiple other avian species.

As I type this, I'm watching one picking up sticks for its nests.  They have two in the walnut tree from last year, masses of twigs about 2-3 ft. in diameter.

Updates around the grounds:  Our walnut has a slight case of mistletoe, and I am contemplating just what to do with it.

Our pomegranate, fig, and boysenberry, and my wife's japanese maple (that I feared had died) are all budding and leafing.  I'm tempted to try to plant cuttings of the fig and pomegranate to make hedges (if anybody has any advice, let me know).

As for the leather shop, I've picked up another customer -- my brother in-law, who has commissioned a belt.  Having never made a belt, I looked up "custom tooled leather belts" and, after taking recovering from the shock of seeing how much people are willing to pay to hold up their pants, I decided to only charge this one, being an experiment, for materials and the cost of one new tool (an adjustable groover).

I can feel the possibilities in it, including the possibility that I will royally screw it up.

I also banged out another arm guard, this one a birthday present for a good friend, Mr. Jung.  It was really nice to get a sense of the speed I've picked up, having cut arm guards for two other clients (one of which I haven't yet delivered, due to my shipment being drawn on by a four year-old).  Mr. Jung has a great story, having just recently reunited with his family in South Korea after having been adopted as a baby.

The Jungs can take some really nice pictures.

On drought

California's drought continues apace, and I'm sure we will soon see the standard cries to the residential water user to conserve! conserve!

I'm not buying it.

I've written about water at my old blog, "Ethics and the Environment" (if interested, read here).

Basically, California's borders are arbitrary, geographically speaking, and so to speak about a "California" water crisis is akin to speaking about an "Eastern Seaboard" water crisis, or some other similarly sized region.

Sadly, our attempts to conserve water via State mandate only ask for a 20% reduction in urban use, which constitutes roughly 5% of total human water use in the State.  If every municipality were to hit their 20% mark, we would conserve about half of all the water that goes just to almonds in California.  That is to say, we wouldn't do diddly-squat to really positively impact the drought on a "California" scale.

However, we most definitely harm local plants and animals by merely cutting back on water use without taking into account our own local watersheds and ecosystems. (Also, consider that "local" is on a California scale: some of the Trinity River, for example, waters Los Angeles some 600 miles to the South).

For example:  My little region has many small riparian corridors that provide habitat for a number of species, including ducks.  Last year, many folks cut back on watering their yards, which resulted in diminished water for their small, local corridors.  Ducks, finding inadequate habitat, went somewhere; my guess is that they were pushed into smaller patches of protected wetlands, where the higher water temperatures (from warmer climate+less runoff into them from the upstream corridors) contributed to unhealthy conditions.  It seems to me that higher concentrations of ducks would exacerbate the rapid spread of deadly diseases, such as the avian botulism that struck the Klamath Basin last year.

If, instead, people had continued to water their lawns in riparian corridors, would the subsequent runoff (with higher humidity and higher water levels) have helped to sustain local populations of ducks (not to mention the myriad other, at times endemic, species of plants, bugs and animals)?

Though my pond is ended, I will continue to provide water for drinking and for bathing for my local birds.