Edhat Fact: More signs said President's Day than Presidents' Day. [more]

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORTS & COLUMNISTS   Nov 08, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Halloween With The Not-Yet-Dead When I heard that David Petry, author of The Best Last Place, was leading a tour of the Santa Barbara Cemetery on Halloween day, I thought, "Maybe I'll finally meet a real live flesh eater."   Oct 25, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Look, Up In The Sky! I turned my gaze a few degrees above the horizon and was dazzled by the kaleidoscopic cornucopia of roof embellishments that adorn the city's fine architecture.   Oct 11, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Tripping on Bonsai Through some bizarre alignment of the planets, Billy Goodnick fell in love with the art of bonsai while simultaneously developing an apartment-bursting collection of houseplants.   Sep 27, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN 2009 Not-So-Beautiful Awards Billy Goodnick presents his annual awards to members of the parallel alternate universe of hideous and paralyzingly misguided landscapes.   Sep 13, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Simple Ideas After Mark Lakeman finishes his presentation attendees will likely leave with envious feelings. They might even be motivated to do something about those feelings.   Aug 30, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Palm Trees Are Stupid Palm trees just do not DO anything. If you planted one of the big guys in your yard a few decades ago, chances are the only people who can enjoy the show live ten blocks away.   Aug 16, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Take Two Aspirin And Meet Me In The Garden Billy Goodnick recently receive a big envelope from Bayer. Do garden writers get really bad headaches?   Aug 02, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Fresh Event I have recently been making an effort to hang out with locals who are growing their own food, raising activist voices about the corporatization of agriculture and caring about how we treat the land.   Jul 19, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Succulents Why do some people have such a problem with succulents? Sometimes it borders on the irrational.   Jul 05, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Santa Barbara Sandstone One of the reasons Billy Goodnick became a landscape architect was Santa Barbara's ubiquitous golden sandstone.   Jun 21, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Scorching Shades of Solstice Maybe it's just me, but it just doesn't quite feel like summer yet. Sure, we had 90-degree weather in March, but that doesn't count.   Jun 05, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Miracle on San Andres Street It took about ten years, but a minor miracle has occurred in Santa Barbara's Westside neighborhood. A sliver of open space has been wedged into a densely packed residential area.   May 22, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Jesusita Fire Final Reflections Billy Goodnick offers a few thoughts and resources regarding Santa Barbara's relationship with fire.   May 11, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Laid Off: The big career opportunity Usually do not write about my life here - I rant and spew about the ugly, praise the beautiful, and muse about the museable stuff. Silvia Uribe, Nicole Freire and the other Edhat writers muse a lot better than I do.   Apr 24, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Earth Day The San Fernando Valley is stalking me. I crawled out of that sweltering armpit of a community in the mid-seventies seeking a cooler climate and told Van Nuys to go suck an egg. Apparently, the Valley is holding a grudge.   Apr 10, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Put the Camera Away and Enjoy the Garden I lead a complex life. If I had a personal logo, it would be an X-shaped candle burning at all four ends. The rigors of pounding out a thousand words for this column are sometimes complicated by the desire to include photographs.   Mar 27, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Question Mark and the Wisterians I’m not sure which I saw more of this past year—political ads warning that Barack Obama was an Islamic, communist foreigner or public service announcements about the switch from analog TV to digital.   Mar 13, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN The Buck Stops Where? For a moment last weekend, it seemed like the planets were in alignment.   Feb 27, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Triangles and Tuxes Billy Goodnick completely understands why the subject of sustainable landscaping isn't splashed over the media.   Feb 13, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Hankering to Plant? Get a License Did they know when they bought those adorable one-gallon plants that each one was genetically hard-wired to get sixty feet tall with a twenty-foot wide canopy?   Jan 30, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Rabid Horticulturists Wanted Franceschi Park is fifteen acres of public open space just east of the El Encanto Hotel. For locals, it's where you take out-of-town guests to show off the million-dollar view of Santa Barbara and see the Channel Islands rise from the Pacific.   Jan 16, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Alice in the Buff Right now Alice lacks the riotous floral color of spring and summer, but there are sensual delights even in the middle of January, some subtle and some that will knock your socks off.   Jan 02, 2009 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Strybing Our visit to the Strybing reminded me of a few plants that will likely reappear in my designs and a few that are still out of reach. The need for good drainage will be the main culprit that might keep some of these out of reach for Santa Barbara landscapes.   Dec 19, 2008 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Killer Combos I give you Billy's Killer Combos. Each of the plants on this list can be used on its own, but these are pairings I've used in local gardens that truly brings out the best of both plants.   Dec 05, 2008 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Not Even With a Ten-Foot Pole Five Plants I Wouldn't Put in a Client's Garden Even if They Threatened to Do Something Terrible to a Cute Little Kitty Cat.   Nov 21, 2008 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Firescape for Edhat Billy Goodnick had another article in the works for this week, but he thought it would be a waste of space not to give you some needed information about fire safety.   Nov 07, 2008 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Overlooked Beauty Silver Nikon CoolPix S10 and Biff the Wonder Spaniel's leash in hand, we headed downtown one recent fall-feeling morn, hoping to find some restorative images.   Oct 23, 2008 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Ugly Canadian Artist? Billy checked out what search keywords and phrases web surfer are using to get to his blog. His shares with us some of the more unusual ones.   Oct 10, 2008 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Not-So-Beautiful Awards Santa Barbara Beautiful does not have an evil twin who rants and spews about the aesthetic blight perpetrated upon the community. If they did, I would certainly lobby to be the prez- make that benevolent dictator.   Sep 26, 2008 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Writing About Writing I refuse to have another business card made. I keep four types of cards in two old cassette tape holders. That's the technology that kicked the crap out of eight-tracks.   Sep 12, 2008 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Ciggy Butts There is nothing about a used cigarette butt tossed on the ground that exempts it from being classified as trash. I don't want to smell them, see them, step on them, or have neighborhood kids playing with them.   Aug 29, 2008 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Readin', Writin' and Rynchospora If you're eager to improve the landscaping around your home, or bone up on something horticultural, take a class! Between the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden and Adult Ed, there's a lot to choose from.   Aug 15, 2008 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Gray About Green Billy Goodnick had a disturbing dream. It was one of those moral dilemma dreams, where you can't figure out which road to take. He was dreaming about artificial grass.   Aug 01, 2008 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Attack Of The Oak Moths Billy Goodnick has been getting a lot of calls from people about, those obnoxious moths killing my oak tree. One person was near apoplectic with the thought of all the oaks in Santa Barbara dying.   Jul 18, 2008 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Grow Your Own Cocktails Billy Goodnick got to thinking. How many ingredients for popular cocktails can we grow in Santa Barbara? Immediately, he ran into one minor problem - He doesn't drink cocktails.   Jul 04, 2008 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN State Street Nature Walk What really makes State Street such a thrill is the amazing diversity of plants that tenaciously survive parades, absent-minded pedestrians veering off course, and the late-night desecrations bestowed by alcohol-soaked crowds in the lower reaches of downtown.   Jun 20, 2008 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Basic Instincts Though records show that garden gnomes didn't appear until the advent of agriculture, there is anthropological evidence supporting the connection between attracting a mate and the placement of a birdbath near the opening of a bachelor's cave.   Jun 06, 2008 NEWS FROM THE GARDEN Garden of Ed(en) Donning my Jimmy Olsen cub-reporter hat, I'm off into the wild fringes of this horticultural paradise, seeking meaningful things to count, shedding light on horticultural happenings in the community, imparting gems of landscape design observations.

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