Garden Pictures

I am still not all that happy with my gardening attempts. The place still has too much dead space. Still though some of the plants have done quite well.


The mustard green plants are now huge. Unfortunately this variety of mustard green does not taste very good. So once they go to seed I will replace them with Japanese Giant Red Mustard Greens which I know taste better.

The alpine strawberries have been the best thing I have planted. I may even tear out the regular strawberries and replace them with alpine ones. The regular strawberries get damaged by bugs too often and most days don't have strawberries to pick. The alpine strawberries seem to have berries ready every day.

The parsley on the left is have the age of the lovage on the right. The lovage plant is perennial so hopefully in another year or two it will be big enough to be useful.

The Cape Gooseberry is large enough to finally be producing a couple berries. Unfortunately they haven't been that good, slightly sweeter tomatillos. Maybe for cooking they would be good, but the plant doesn't produce nearly enough for that. I will probably keep it a few more months to see if next summer it has a big crop.

 The tarragon has never done well. When it finally died off a month or two back, I thought it was gone for good. Then it started sprouting from its base. Apparently it was just dormant for the winter.

The Chinese Chives also went dormant for the winter, they flowered made a ton of seeds then died off. Now they seem to be coming back quickly though. 

The Goji berry also lost all of its leaves. It looks like it is sprouting a ton of new branches now though so it might be enormous by the time it has berries next fall. 

A few miner's lettuce seeds sprouted. I am really hoping these will take over because they would be a great low water ground cover. Since some grow wild not far at all from here I imagine they should do alright.

The Nevin's Barberry appears to be starting to flower. For an endangered species it seems to be tough as nails. It has been growing slowly though, so maybe that is the problem. 

The California Native Wildflower mix sprouted well. Unfortunately it will be really hard to weed since I have no idea what sort of plants are there.

I planted three varieties of native clover, and some white clover. Some of those plants are getting quite large so hopefully they will naturalize. They don't seem to need all that much water so they might be able to cover up some of the dead space in the yard. 

New Seeds

I just got my shipment of new seeds from Baker Creek. I also planted a few seeds which I saved from last year. Since most of what I planted last year is perennial I still have a lot of that going so I am mostly trying to fill in some of the bare dirt in the yard.

Here is what I planted:
Chinese 5 Color Peppers
Sweetie Star Stevia
Pepino Melon
Green Grape Tomato
Japanese Giant Red Mustard Greens
Pepper Cress
Merlot Lettuce
Slow Bolt Cilantro
Anise
Anise Hyssop
Early Purple Vienna Kohlrabi
Bronze Smoky Fennel 
Five Color Silverbeet Swiss Chard

For the most part these plants do a reasonable job of fitting with the forest garden theme but I did get quite a few annual seeds for things I am likely to actually use. I imagine as time and motivation leave me I will reduce things to almost entirely perennial herbs and berries. The berries will be large enough in three or four years that little else will fit.

Bill Gates Reading List

Reading through the AMA by Bill Gates, I ran into his reading list. At least we are not letting idiots be the richest person in the world. Assuming he actually has read that entire list, he is putting the typical American to shame.

Actually, I suppose the raw number of books doesn't impress me. It isn't a particularly fast rate. Still, he managed to read a lot of books I had not heard of on subjects I am reasonably up to speed on. Perhaps this is because I mostly limit myself to audiobooks and most of the most interesting sounding books on the list are not available in that format.

La Habra City Council

I decided to show up to my first city council meeting last night. The La Habra city council was considering whether to approve their general plan for 2035.

They made a reasonable case that they would be at least improving the city. I am somewhat skeptical of their ability to actually implement these changes, but it was clear that at least they were less anti-development than most Southern Californian cities.

I thought about arguing less strict zoning was required, but decided to soften my comments. I gave a short speech encouraging them to continue with plans for walkable, mixed use, high density development and encouraging them to make improvements to La Habra Boulevard to make it more pedestrian friendly.

Apparently I was recorded on video somewhere near the three and a half hour mark. I decided I did not want to watch it though. It was not one of my more coherent speeches.

Turns out that I gave developers quite a gift by sending that letter to the city council. If anyone challenges the La Habra general plan in court they can only sue over issues that were brought to the city council in writing before the approval, or which were brought up last night. My letter is now on the public record, so any developer has justification to fight for higher density development.

Native Wildflowers

I have heard that before Europeans came a lot of California was covered with bunch grasses with annual flowers growing between them. I decided to try and make the north side yard into that.

That yard is very thin and on the North side of a building. I doubt it gets more than an hour of direct sun a day. Still, the aloe I planted there is doing just fine and some weeds have popped up so it is not completely devoid of hope.

The best starting point seemed to be the Larner Seeds Shady California Wildflower Mixture. Unfortunately much of this collection is plants which naturally grow under redwood trees. That is not my side yard. Only a couple of the plants seem like they have a chance of growing. With a little luck there is at least one or two which can hold up in that shady an environment though.

At least California has impressive native flowers. Here are some from that mix:

Farwell-to-Spring

Mountain Garland

Red Ribbons Clarkia

Baby-Blue Eyes

Calico Flower

Chinese Houses

Bird's Eye Gilia

I ended up getting Torrey's Melic Grass for the bunch grass. Not sure if this was a good choice as Orange County is right at the end of its range, but it is supposed to do well in dry shade.

Open Letter to La Habra City Government

I just sent the following letter to a dozen members of the local government in La Habra. Initially I wrote a more strongly worded one, but I backed off after realizing that the La Habra General Plan was much better written than some of the older documents I read.

I recently moved into La Habra and am writing this to encourage changes to the La Habra General Plan, Housing Element, and zoning that encourage the urbanization of La Habra. I am concerned that La Habra seems to be stagnating when it should be building at a rapid pace to expand the housing supply and replace the large number of buildings which have reached the end of their useful life.

Because of my interest in seeing La Habra thrive, I just read through many of the planning documents posted online. The La Habra Boulevard specific plan written in 1999 is remarkable in that it could have been written yesterday. The problems with La Habra Boulevard are exactly the same as they were fifteen years ago. There are too many buildings in poor condition, too many closed storefronts and too many single family homes still remain which should be replaced with commercial or mixed use.  Clearly those ideas failed, and La Habra is in need of better plans.

While La Habra Boulevard is ugly it does have a real advantage that should be preserved over the rest of La Habra when it comes to walkability. Whenever you find yourself driving from Harbor to Beach on Whittier, La Habra, Lambert, or Imperial count pedestrians on the sidewalk as you pass. What you will find is that there are few if any pedestrians on Imperial or Lambert. There are more on Whittier but because of how fast the cars move it does not feel safe so the numbers are still low. La Habra Boulevard is the only place with a reasonable amount of pedestrian traffic. This is because homes have been built near businesses and paths to these businesses are direct and unimpeded. This strength should be expanded by putting more apartment buildings on and near La Habra Boulevard and altering zoning to allow them to be higher density. Also, this pedestrian traffic means that parking requirements should be lower on La Habra Boulevard than in the rest of the La Habra, customers have alternate ways to get to these stores and city policy should reflect that. There is a surplus of parking at the moment and no reason to use that as an excuse to block development.

The community development section of the September draft of the La Habra General Plan outlines a reasonable way of fixing up the city. Apartment buildings and mixed use developments up to five stories tall would come to La Habra replacing many decrepit buildings and creating an actual downtown where little more than for lease signs exist today. Still, it is less ambitious than it should be. Too few areas were zoned for the highest density and the proposed rate of development is only modest. The average of 175 new housing units a year the document proposes is a step in the right direction but it will take a very long time to clean up the city at that rate. To speed up the process the highest density mixed use zoning should be extended. The entire length of La Habra Boulevard would benefit from these buildings so every lot touching that street should get the highest density mixed use zoning.

Unfortunately when I read the housing element it was not as encouraging. A draconian height restriction of 2.5 stories was mentioned which would make it much more difficult to revitalize the city.  La Habra should be pushing ahead to become an urban center, if anything height requirements should be increased to 7 stories along the entire length of La Habra Boulevard and it certainly shouldn’t be left at 2.5 stories.

Height restrictions should also be made less stringent for single family homes apartments and condos around the city. Many new developments, such as The Groves and Amerige Heights in Fullerton and even the Avo development in La Habra include three story homes. These should be allowed throughout La Habra. Three story homes more efficiently use space which is of utmost importance now that La Habra lacks large empty lots. Judging by the $690,000 that homes in Amergie Heights start at these three story homes are also highly in demand. The city should not be standing between people and their dream homes.

I have no business interests influenced by these ideas and these views are by own, not the views of my employer. I am solely motivated by a desire to see La Habra made into a more interesting and livable town.

To gain publicity for these views this letter, along with quite a number of articles supporting similar policies, were posted to the La Habra subreddit on reddit.com (http://www.reddit.com/r/LaHabraCA/ )

Spending in 2013

Just as in 2012, I made fairly detailed records of spending in 2013.These are fairly incomplete records because they do not include expenses taken directly from my paycheck such as health and life insurance. They also do not include expenses paid by my wife such as car insurance.

Here is a chart of my overall spending:

At first glance it looks little different from the 2012 chart. The section labeled Home is a bit larger, the section labeled education has disappeared with the paying off of my student loans, the section labeled food & dining is larger due to my laziness in cooking my own lunches.

My spending on food & dining was 13% of my income, about 3% higher than in 2012. It is even more lopsided towards eating out, with a mere 20% of my food budget going to grocery stores.

Here are the top five grocery stores by percentage of income I spent there:

1. Sprouts, 0.95%
2. 99 Ranch, 0.28%
3. Stater Bros, 0.25%
4. Assorted Farmers Markets, 0.18%
5. Trader Joe's, 0.16%

I finally managed to expel all stores from rewards cards from my top spending list. Once again Sprouts is where I spend most my money.

Here are the top five restaurants:

1. La Fuente, 0.5%
2. Chipotle, 0.4%
3. Da Lae Korean, 0.27%
4. Mikasa, 0.2%
5. Jinza Teriyaki, 0.17%

All of these are restaurants close to my work with the exception of La Fuente which was a hole in the wall Mexican place I was trying, and failed, to keep in business. The most notable change was that I pushed the chains In-N-Out and Panda express out of the top five.

I spent 9% of my income on my vehicle. This is pretty appalling to me since that huge block of money is required to operate a 2004 Ford Focus which costs about twenty cents a mile to operate. This money was 49% Service and 46% gas. The rest went to parking and other random expenses.

Here are the top five gas stations:

1. 76, 1.05%
2. Arco, 0.66%
3. Chevron, 0.42%
4. Shell, 0.26%
5. USA Gasoline, 0.13%

I am making a conscience decision to spend as much money on [La Habra](http://www.reddit.com/r/LaHabraCA/) Boulevard as is reasonable since my housing value is directly tied to how much that area can be improved. The bulk of spending at 76 went to a run down little gas station there.

The percentage of my spending on housing and transportation is concerning. This is particularly true since I only owned the home half the year so next year will be even more expensive. I spent 37% of my income on housing, and 14% on transportation. So 51% of my income I have little direct control over.

Here is where I spent money I spent the most on other shopping such as gifts, audiobooks, hobbies, and home improvement:

1. Target, 1.83%
2. Amazon, 1.72%
3. Lowes, 1.68%
4. Checkmat Brazillian Jiu Jitsu, 1.62%
5. AT&T, 1.60%
6. Apple, 1.36%
7. Time Warner, 1.0%
8. Ralph Gracie Jiu Jitsu, 0.88%
9. Macy's, 0.66%
10. Cougar Stone, 0.5%

 The only real surprise there is how much less I spent at Amazon, and how much more I spent at Target compared to in 2012. I expect those numbers to be reversed this upcoming year since I no longer live within walking distance of a Target. Lowes of course came up so high because of spending on the new house.