Ok, this blog has nothing to do with racism, but it got you to pay attention, right? Actually, I’ve been thinking and tripping out a lot lately on water……Yes, of all the things to trip out on, my ridiculous mind has to settle on water!  Rain, oceans, the main ingredient in beer, water is awesome.  Owning a native plant nursery and being a lover of California native plants, I almost have to be into water and water conservation.  It’s like growing up in West Texas and being a fan of Tejano or Country Music and Fajitas.  Speaking of West Texas, that’s where this little trip-out session begins……

I grew up in El Paso, home of the UTEP Fighting Miners, lots of good Tex-Mex Food and a town full of hippies. Yup, you would never know it but me and my neighbors, all 700,000 of them, were a bunch of pot-smoking, long-haired hippies.  Don’t let the flag-waving, beef-eating, football-loving stereotype fool you……Every person in El Paso was and is a hippie.  A quick drive around any El Paso neighborhood (or any ‘desert’ city, for that matter) will show you the same thing – Small Lawns, Lots of native and drought-tolerant plants, and malls, government properties and even huge mansions all with the same type of low-water landscaping.  Water Conservation and caring more about your water supply than how many pretty flowers you have are classic signs of a hippie community!  Let’s compare El Paso to the supposedly ‘green’, ‘liberal’ and ‘hippy’ Southern California.  A quick drive around the City of Ventura will reveal just the opposite of my hometown – Malls and shopping centers with almost every kind of landscaping imaginable, government properties with huge amounts of lawn (wait, maybe that’s a golf course) and huge mansions with even huger (that’s not a word!) water bills.  Average yearly rainfall in El Paso is 9 inches, Average yearly rainfall in Los Angeles is 14 inches.  Using my ridiculous math skills that means that Southern California, on average, gets 5 more inches of rain a year than El Paso!

Now that I think about it, my people back in El Paso actually weren’t all hippies (they were Chippies – Chicano Hippies!), they have simply learned to live with what they have.  Yes, we were probably forced to live with this reality by high water prices and strict watering restrictions, but the fact of the matter is that water conservation is a way of life in El Paso. It doesn’t matter if you are a Conservative, a Liberal or whatever Obama is choosing to be these days (Ouch!), 9 inches of rain a year is 9 inches, there ain’t no changing that!  Now, I am no water expert, no scientist, not even a botanist, and if I go to Arizona I am not even a U.S. Citizen, but I am smart enough to know this – We and the rest of Southern California need to get to where El Paso is.  We need to be able to wake up every morning and make water conservation a part of our life, without thinking about it.  We need to accept where we live, and realize we can’t keep taking unlimited amounts of water from Sacramento or from our own groundwater supplies without consequences.  And don’t worry all of you who fear that your property values will go down because of all the cactus and mesquite trees that will be moving into your neighborhood; As far as landscaping goes, Ventura County will never look like Phoenix or El Paso, mostly because many of those desert plants don’t grow well out here.  Along with much cooler summer temperatures, our spoiled landscapes get a lot of their moisture from just being close to the ocean and being able to kiss the fog every night (damn that was poetic).  But on the flip-side, El Paso and other desert cities can get flash floods in the summer from all of those big monsoon storms, something that would be almost impossible to get here in Southern California because we receive almost no rain from May-October (That’s 5-6 months of no rain, that means our native plants have evolved with this dry time! Can you imagine not watering your current garden for 5-6 months?).  So what’s the point of all of this rambling?  Well, my hope is that we all become El Paso-type hippies soon and learn to love Fajitas……I mean, live within our water means. That would be a huge first step.  Let’s all appreciate that we are not in a desert, but our home is desert-like.  Let’s be proud of our Mediterranean Climate and what it means for ourselves, our families, and our futures.  It’s crazy to think that planting one native plant or one small low-water yard can make a difference, but it can.  I read somewhere that over 50% of the water used by homeowners in Southern California is used outside the house on landscaping.  While I am not exactly sure how true this is (because it wasn’t on Wikileaks), it is probably more true than false.  Just like the landscaping in El Paso and other desert cities blends in with the surrounding landscape, the day is coming that gardens in Southern California will reflect our local hills and canyons.  Who knows, your front yard may have once been home to some white sage, lemonadeberry or an oak tree, providing food for people and wildlife.  And even more importantly, maybe its’ time to bring those old friends back……Plant Native, Enjoy Life!