My YouTube Video is Going Viral!!!

I'm a freakin' rock star on YouTube? How else would you explain 1000 hits in 2 weeks for a bizarre, silly music video?

I co-host a humorous/educational TV show in the greater Santa Barbara region along with Owen Dell. We're called the Garden Wise Guys (sound familiar?) and have been on the air for about 4 years, doing a new show every 3 months. The most recent episode, called Lawn & Order, is all about finding rational ways to reduce or eliminate our wasteful, unsustainable love affair with turf grass.

It starts with Owen and me dressed in orange prison jump suits, awaiting sentencing by the judge. Our offense? Our extreme position about murdering lawns. We get 24 hours to convince the judge that we can tone down the rhetoric and provide a more measured approach to water conservation and environmentally friendly landscaping.

But the high point is the 3 minute music video. It's titled "Takin' Out The Grass Is A Gas, Baby Can You Dig It?" I'd love to tell you more about it, but you wouldn't believe me. So take a look. If nothing else, you'll enjoy my bright flamingo-colored sport coat and stingy brim hat.

Must We ALWAYS Be Funny?

(L) Billy Goodnick (R) Owen Dell

Owen Dell, author of Sustainable Landscaping For Dummies, is a pretty funny guy. I know, because I'm a pretty funny guy. We've been working together on a regional TV show called Garden Wise Guys (GWG) for about three years. It's a silly show. It's a very informative show. We're very fond of each other and the chemistry that erupts when we're working on ideas for the show is actually better than the show. We often comment that the writing sessions are far better than what we capture on GWG.

We think we're very clever and have an important message about embracing sustainable landscaping practices. So for a while we tried to figure out how to take over the world!!! (MWA HA HA!!! said the boyz, rubbing their hands together...no, clarification: Owen rubs his hands together while I rub MY hands together). We thought up a few business ideas all of which we gave up on. Its initials were CGG. Nuff about that...here's the main point, which I believe reinforces the initial contention that Owen and I are very silly people. The following is a series of e-mails that began as a serious question, but as generally happens between us, was trampled and pounded beyond recognition due to the unmitigated urge to be clever and funny. Herewith...

Original question from Owen:
B,
I'll be speaking in Vancouver, B.C. next month on business
opportunities in sustainable landscaping. They have asked me whether
I have any hard statistics on the market, where the money is, etc. I
really don't, but I think it's a reasonable request and a good thing
to add to my talk. If you happen to have any thoughts on how to find
such info I'd appreciate hearing them. I'll be looking into this over
the next couple of weeks.

Thanks.

Response from Billy
O. Perplexing and illusive. As you know, that's the question we keep asking ourselves.
Given what we heard from someone recently (was it Rusznak?) I'd start with the reference librarian at the main library. Could kill two birds with one stone (that's the IPM approach); one for your Vancouver talk and one for CGG.


Reply from Owen
Yes, but is that stone native sandstone or has it been trucked in? If native, was it removed from a protected area or were any endangered species hiding under it at the time of removal? Was an EIR issued for the project? Will the stone be returned to its original location after it has been used to kill the two birds?

O.

From Billy

You're such a buzz killer!

If you really need to know, it was not actually a stone in the geologic mineral sense, but was made from organic waste, originating at the south end of a northbound musk ox, then hand-formed and sun dried into perfect spheres by indigenous Nepalese dung sculptors, carried down from the Himalayas on beasts of burden (who urinated on sprouting organic vegetables along the way), then placed on sail boats and brought to Santa Barbara, where the biodegradable hemp packaging was reused as tie-dyed fabrics to cloth poverty-stricken hippies at De la Guerra Plaza. Then the "stones" were distributed to sadistic little children of meth addicts who would ambush the rare double-breasted pin-striped Western warbler and smash its little skull repeatedly. The carcass of the boid was rendered into blood and bone meal, then sent back on the aforementioned sailboats to the foothills of the Himalayas to supplement the urine-soaked organic veggies.

You can calculate the embodied energy, but I think it's minimal. My conscience is clear.

~~~~~~
If you'd like to catch a bit of our show, we're at sbwater.org

I Swore I'd Never Do This

I’m breaking one of my own hard and fast rules. I’m posting pictures of my indoor plants on my blog. No offense to some of my loyal readers, but I generally eschew blogs from cold climate shut-in gardeners who revel in their Christmas cactus blooms and feel compelled to post a few hundred pics of them everyday whilst wistfully longing for the snow to melt and the crocus to pop up. As an aside, I also don’t care much for knowing what your cat vomited up this week or what’s going on at your quilting club. Call me a snob, but my plate spilled over long ago and I can only process so many blogging bits.

But I walked into my soon-to-be-laid-off-from office this morning and one of my hand-me-down orchids is gloriously blooming on the magical window ledge. I say magical because everyone in my building grovels in amazement at the ability of orchids and other shaggy plants to be resurrected in this space. Whenever a plant goes into cardiac arrest at their workstation, I receive a visit from a coworker asking if I can breathe life back into it. They figure that because I’m a landscape architect, I have a dusty tome of mystical incantations that bring plants back from the dead. I threaten to turn them into zombie plants that will stalk their cubicles at night, sucking the xylem and phloem from their languishing plants, but haven’t actually followed through.

What they don’t know is that my horticultural prowess is just the good fortune of having a great southeast exposure and the ability to detect when a plant is getting dry (lift it up – if it’s still heavy, it’s wet; if it feels light it’s dry). I also occasionally remember to put a few crystals of that hideously blue Miracle-Gro in the water once in a while. I know, I know – Miracle-Gro is just more petrochemical poison, but I had someone hand it off years ago and I’m too lazy to track down a good organic product. Hey, the same 6 oz. can has been serving me for a decade so what’s the harm.

With no further ado, I give you my window sill plants. No, I haven’t named them.

My Ego Needs Viagra

It is with great pleasure, pomposity and (need a word with a 'P', hmmmm...) pistachios that I announce the on-line episode of "Garden Wise Guys: The Big Picture." Ooops, forgot to put a bunch of exclamation marks at the end of that sentence, and now I've gone too far, so I'm going to skip it, and besides, I haven't had my morning coffee yet and the reach with my pinkie finger is too risky. Onward! ouch.

I co-host Garden Wise Guys on the City of Santa Barbara's own cable channel. Owen Dell, author of the just-released Sustainable Landscaping for Dummies (at his website) is the co-host and co-writer, and all-around fabulous and brilliant dude. We've had the quarterly show on the air going on our third year and this episode shares all the ideas of sustainable landscaping in an Ebert & Siskel meet Mystery Science Theater retrospective mashup, to explain the big ideas. We got to wear tuxedos and pontificate from the gloriously restored Granada Theater in downtown Santa Barbara. We also got our asses thrown out (and wait for the outtakes at the end - mucho fun).

The episode runs about an hour, so get a soft cushion for your chair, a stiff tumbler of your favorite adult beverage (or tea, if you prefer) and prepare for fun. We even have a cameo appearance from our rubber chicken mascot, Dirtrude. That's her in the middle, Owen on the right.

If you make it through the whole episode, please come back here and let me know what you think. My ego is a frail thing.

But enough about ME. Let's talke about YOU. What do YOU think about me?

My next 15 minutes of fame...

On the eve of the eve of the premiere of the next Garden Wise Guys TV show Sunday night, a local paper interviewed Owen and me for this article. Next time I hope The Daily Sound runs it past an editor, 'cause I don't think Owen and I will be "dawning" our tuxes anytime soon.

Triangles and Tuxes

It's called "repurposing" in some circles. I call it using every outlet I have to get the message out. I've posted an article at my bi-weekly Edhat.com column with a book review of my good buddy, Owen Dell's book. It's everything you might need to know about sustainable landscaping.

Many people lose site of the fact that all our man-made beautiful green outdoor spaces come at some cost to the environment - this book shows how to reduce the impacts and actually do something good for the planet.

There's also a bit of self-promotion, but that's just due to my love affair with myself. I am, as you know, the world's greatest authority on my own opinion.

Read on...

Dawn of the Carnivorous Babies of Lotusland!

One of the most sustainable things that can happen to your garden sounds a little like a zombie movie. I’m talking about little babies eating grown-ups. As they say in Hollywood, here’s the story treatment. Santa Barbara being so close to Hollywood, I’ll give it my best shot.

Just before dawn, as an waning moon sets over the gnarled and twisted trees, a barely visible white oval, perched on a slender filament, slowly splits open, revealing the hideous baby within. (Pretty spooky so far, eh?). Barely newborn and craving its first meal, this grotesque creature prowls for a living prey. (O.K., now I’M getting creeped out.) The sun breaks the horizon and the creature’s neighbor begins to stir. Suddenly aware that a terrible fate is about to befall it, the neighbor, disoriented, attempts to escape, but it’s too late. It becomes baby’s first meal and the taste of living flesh is forever imprinted in its young mind. Sorry. Not flesh; make that “chitinous exoskeleton.”

Gotcha! You were picturing something like the Gerber baby, but with a hideous misshapen mouth. Nope. Just our friend the lacewing larva, out for a quick snack, biting through the luscious, crunchy surface of a destructive mealybug.

I’ve known for a long time that beneficial insects beat out toxic pesticide sprays any day. That’s why it’s usually rare to hear anyone complain about ladybugs in their gardens. But my visit to Lotusland yesterday helped fill in the blanks. Owen Dell and I were taping a new segment for our TV show, Garden Wise Guys, at Ganna Walska’s Lotusland insectary and butterfly garden. Lotusland has been pesticide-free for years, and their insectary gardens are strategically placed to offer good habitat for good guys.

Virginia Hayes joined us on camera on very short notice and shared some very cool information with us. Virginia is not only Lotusland’s curator, but also writes a delightful weekly column for the Santa Barbara’s weekly Independent chock full of great garden info.

We stumbled through a few hours of taping and will probably end up with about 5 minutes of information and madness. No, not fair--I stumbled, Owen nailed it, and Virginia was as smooth as silk. But what I learned in those few hours should be shared with all of you.

Here’s a quick preview of what you’ll learn when this segment airs in mid-fall. We hope to add one more good reason for you to abandon the use of toxic chemicals in your landscape and adopt a more sustainable model for your maintenance.

First, beneficial insects come in all shapes and sizes, but what most have in common is that they are first attracted to your garden by a source of food (generally nectar-bearing flowers), then take up residence to lay eggs. When the babies hatch out, they’re the ones that eat the larva and adult pests in your garden. If you get this part right, you have an endless supply of garden helpers.

Next, the more diverse your offerings, the more diverse will be the range of beneficial insects. The tiny good guys generally seek out small flat flowers that have their sweet nectar within easy reach (native Buckwheat, parsley, carrots), whereas the dudes and dudettes with long “drinking straw” feeding tubes can slurp nectar out of deeper tubular flowers, like the plants in the mint family (sage, lavender, Lamb’s ear).

To be sure they will set up housekeeping and hang around to feast, be sure there’s some dense cover. Planting a few of the big ornamental grasses works well and they look great year round.

I continually extol the virtues of mulch as a way to keep down weeds and conserve soil moisture, but it’s got an equally important role. The insects that inhabit your decomposing mulch can also act as a food source during certain parts of an insect’s life cycle. So keep that mulch layer nice and thick and you’ll get even more benefit!

For more information about Lotusland's Best Management Practicices, click over to their site.

With all the big Hollywood film industry folks that live around here, maybe this blog will get me my first horror flick screenwriting job. Hey, I guy can hope!