Another pond because I'm pond obsessed and need more. Still need to find a nice stick for the birds (and hopefully frogs in the future?? đ„ș because a bisexual life without frogs is a very sad bisexual life đž) and build a cute little stairs for hedgehogs in case they fall in. Other pond is already being used by so many birds đ„čđđ±
A thing about neurodivergence and masking is that eventually you get to the point of realising that a. masking doesn't necessarily mean masking as "normal"; and b. being able to dictate exactly what kind of weirdo people think you are is often much more valuable. It's like, ha ha, fuckers, now I control the narrative.
[ID: two photos of a felt crow case. the crow has a little pouch for scissors on one wing, a place for needles on the other, and a pocket on the abdomen. the tail and the outside of the wings are decorated with beads. the face is embroidered. the crow is surrounded by sewing notions. end ID]
As relentless rains pounded LA, the cityâs âspongeâ infrastructure helped gather 8.6 billion gallons of waterâenough to sustain over 100,000
As relentless rains pounded LA, the cityâs âspongeâ infrastructure helped gather 8.6 billion gallons of waterâenough to sustain over 100,000 households for a year.
Earlier this month, the future fell on Los Angeles. A long band of moisture in the sky, known as an atmospheric river, dumped 9 inches of rain on the city over three daysâover half of what the city typically gets in a year. Itâs the kind of extreme rainfall thatâll get ever more extreme as the planet warms.
The cityâs water managers, though, were ready and waiting. Like other urban areas around the world, in recent years LA has been transforming into a âsponge city,â replacing impermeable surfaces, like concrete, with permeable ones, like dirt and plants. It has also built out âspreading grounds,â where water accumulates and soaks into the earth.
With traditional dams and all that newfangled spongy infrastructure, between February 4 and 7 the metropolis captured 8.6 billion gallons of stormwater, enough to provide water to 106,000 households for a year. For the rainy season in total, LA has accumulated 14.7 billion gallons.
Long reliant on snowmelt and river water piped in from afar, LA is on a quest to produce as much water as it can locally. âThere's going to be a lot more rain and a lot less snow, which is going to alter the way we capture snowmelt and the aqueduct water,â says Art Castro, manager of watershed management at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. âDams and spreading grounds are the workhorses of local stormwater capture for either flood protection or water supply.â
Centuries of urban-planning dogma dictates using gutters, sewers, and other infrastructure to funnel rainwater out of a metropolis as quickly as possible to prevent flooding. Given the increasingly catastrophic urban flooding seen around the world, though, that clearly isnât working anymore, so now planners are finding clever ways to capture stormwater, treating it as an asset instead of a liability. âThe problem of urban hydrology is caused by a thousand small cuts,â says Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at UC Berkeley. âNo one driveway or roof in and of itself causes massive alteration of the hydrologic cycle. But combine millions of them in one area and it does. Maybe we can solve that problem with a thousand Band-Aids.â
Or in this case, sponges. The trick to making a city more absorbent is to add more gardens and other green spaces that allow water to percolate into underlying aquifersâporous subterranean materials that can hold waterâwhich a city can then draw from in times of need. Engineers are also greening up medians and roadside areas to soak up the water thatâd normally rush off streets, into sewers, and eventually out to sea...
To exploit all that free water falling from the sky, the LADWP has carved out big patches of brown in the concrete jungle. Stormwater is piped into these spreading grounds and accumulates in dirt basins. That allows it to slowly soak into the underlying aquifer, which acts as a sort of natural underground tank that can hold 28 billion gallons of water.
During a storm, the city is also gathering water in dams, some of which it diverts into the spreading grounds. âAfter the storm comes by, and it's a bright sunny day, youâll still see water being released into a channel and diverted into the spreading grounds,â says Castro. That way, water moves from a reservoir where itâs exposed to sunlight and evaporation, into an aquifer where itâs banked safely underground.
On a smaller scale, LADWP has been experimenting with turning parks into mini spreading grounds, diverting stormwater there to soak into subterranean cisterns or chambers. Itâs also deploying green spaces along roadways, which have the additional benefit of mitigating flooding in a neighborhood: The less concrete and the more dirt and plants, the more the built environment can soak up stormwater like the actual environment naturally does.
As an added benefit, deploying more of these green spaces, along with urban gardens, improves the mental health of residents. Plants here also âsweat,â cooling the area and beating back the urban heat island effectâthe tendency for concrete to absorb solar energy and slowly release it at night. By reducing summer temperatures, you improve the physical health of residents. âThe more trees, the more shade, the less heat island effect,â says Castro. âSometimes when itâs 90 degrees in the middle of summer, it could get up to 110 underneath a bus stop.â
LAâs far from alone in going spongy. Pittsburgh is also deploying more rain gardens, and where they absolutely must have a hard surfaceâsidewalks, parking lots, etc.âtheyâre using special concrete bricks that allow water to seep through. And a growing number of municipalities are scrutinizing properties and charging owners fees if they have excessive impermeable surfaces like pavement, thus incentivizing the switch to permeable surfaces like plots of native plants or urban gardens for producing more food locally.
So the old way of stormwater management isnât just increasingly dangerous and ineffective as the planet warms and storms get more intenseâit stands in the way of a more beautiful, less sweltering, more sustainable urban landscape. LA, of all places, is showing the world thereâs a better way.
The infrastructure to make the county more "spongy" is also used in the dry season to remediate contaminated groundwater and to return recycled water to the aquifers.
There have also been some pilot projects to make flood-prone neighborhoods more spongy on a small scale by distributing water barrels (to hold more water out of the storm drain system) and regrading the edges of roads in areas without sidewalks to allow for greater ground infiltration. I've been studying this for a while because we had to deal with a grading problem that caused a lot of water to build up against our foundation (thankfully poured concrete rather than a raised foundation, but it's still not great). There's a lot of small scale ways to reduce runoff that contribute to the overall sponginess while improving quality of life in other ways.
Making the average yard (at least in the Midwest) more capable of holding water is so easy that it's nuts that more people don't do it. Every bit you put back into the soil instead of letting run off mitigates flooding and stores water in the ground for dry periods.
The mantra for rainwater management is slow it down, spread it out, soak it in. Water soaks into the ground more easily when it moves slowly, so plant every bit of soil you can. You can force water to move over stones or other obstacles to slow it down as well. If you can spread the water over a larger area, it will naturally move more slowly, also soaking in more easily.
Rain gardens are just shallow depressions, usually 6" to 12" deep at most, designed to to hold water for 24 or 48 hours until it soaks into the ground. All you need is a shovel and plants native to your area that have deep roots.
I made a rain garden in my front yard that takes the discharge from my sump pump as well as a gutter. Even in a big storm, I have no runoff from that side of the yard. I have been know to take videos of my rain garden in a storm and send them to my gardening friends. Check out the rainscaping page at Missouri Botanical Garden for more methods of managing rainwater.
Okay,I just want to share the super cool fucking site I found
Ever wanted to exercise more, but didnât know how/didnât have a plan/were overwhelmed by the insane number of choices online/no money?
Look at darebee. All of their workout plans are FREE, come with timers and checkboxes right on the page, and even better, ARE OFTEN RPG THEMED so you can fucking role play while you exercise wtff (and yes, the story and the workout changes with your choices)
They have programs for if you only want to do seated exercises, programs if you donât want to get on the floor, and programs for ALL levels of fitness, including injury recovery.
Plus, if like me, you get anxious about making sure youâre doing it right, they have a full free library of videos for each exercise.
Cephalopod lovers, meet a squid thatâs as cute as its name: the dumpling squid (Euprymna tasmanica)! Also known as the southern bobtail squid, this cephalopod inhabits shallow waters off the coast of southern Australia. Itâs an ambush predator and uses mucus glands in its skin to coat itself in sand, where it then lies in wait for prey, like shrimp and small fish. Dumplings must learn to hunt fast: Because males of this species die shortly after mating and females die soon after laying eggs, newborn squid need to fend for themselves. These precocious hatchlings can snag prey twice their size!
About the tornado smell, yes! Have you noticed the strange color the sky turns? It's hard to explain but it's an eerie flat sour yellowish color that sort of goes green as the wind picks up. As you might guess I've been through dozens of tornadoes
Yes, it's a very peculiar color, but I'm not sure it would be visible at 2am. But I'm very familiar with the color and if I can see it that's the time I take to the basement. Thankfully we just got a little rain and wind so no color, no smell, and I could go sit in the doorway and watch it all pass!
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