Staffie mix Brooklyn’s got kisses for everyone

• February 22, 2025

Breed: Staffordshire terrier mix

Age: 4 years

Sex: Spayed female

Size: 49 pounds

Brooklyn’s story: This sweet Staffie mix gal ended up at the shelter after she had been used for breeding. Brooklyn is a sweet soul who is full of kisses and tail wags. She’s so grateful to be rescued! Brooklyn is dog-, people- and kid-friendly. She’s short and compact, making her the perfect co-pilot and cuddle partner. Brooklyn will do great in just about any type of home, but especially with a family who loves Staffies. Brooklyn was diagnosed with a heart defect and had a procedure to fix it on Feb. 6. Her surgery was a success and she shouldn’t have any long-term issues as a result.

Adoption fee: $400, includes spay, microchip, vaccines and worm and flea treatments

Adoption procedure: Fill out Lovebugs Rescue’s online application.

​ Orange County Register 

UCLA gymnastics reaches No. 2 but it’s ‘just a ranking’

• February 22, 2025

The UCLA women’s gymnastics team has crept up the national rankings, rising from its dismal 195.250 team score that marked the start of the season.

The Bruins are now the No. 2 team in the country after hitting 197.675 – but head coach Janelle McDonald knows her team has more to give.

“It shows that we’re a team that can compete with anybody in the country,” McDonald told reporters Thursday. “But it’s just a ranking.”

“Each and every week we reset, we focus on what’s next, not what’s behind us. And get excited about what’s ahead and and what we can do that following weekend.”

A trip to Michigan, the only Big Ten team aside from UCLA (8-2 overall, 5-0 Big Ten) to win a national title, is on deck for Sunday. The Wolverines (8-2, 4-1) are ranked in the Top 20 nationally in every event and their No. 7 balance beam squad boasts an average score of 49.211.

The Bruins’ beam team is slightly ahead of that mark at 49.329 and Emma Malabuyo is the second-highest-rated individual beam worker.

Vault is where UCLA will look to make its next jump in progress. The Bruins have the top-ranked floor team, beam is ranked third and bars is fifth, but vault is their lowest-standing event at No. 7.

The event’s scores have dipped over the past two meets and the Bruins are adding more 10.0 start values to the lineup to help boost their numbers. However, chasing a perfect 10 on vault isn’t necessarily a priority.

“If you have a Chae (Campbell) vault and you stick it, I don’t care if it’s a 9.95 start value,” McDonald said. “I care less about the start value and more about the execution, because at the end of the day, it’s a half 10th (of a point). Ideally, we’d love to have everybody do 10.0 start value and stick, but that’s what we’re working for.”

Three freshmen compete on vault – Riley Jenkins, who led off in the last meet against Penn State, Mika Webster-Longin and Macy McGowan. Webster-Longin and McGowan have also appeared on beam and floor exercise.

One of the biggest challenges that gymnasts experience in the transition from elite to college gymnastics is the physical demand of competing on a weekly basis.

“It’s pretty cool to see them starting to get comfortable competing week after week and owning their role on the team in that way,” McDonald said. “I’m excited about how they can continue to grow throughout their NCAA career, and I know that they’re going to have a lot of really special moments ahead of them.”

No. 2 UCLA (8-2, 5-0) at No. 15 MICHIGAN (8-2, 4-1)

When: 4 p.m. Sunday

Where: Crisler Center, Ann Arbor, Michigan

TV: Big Ten Network

​ Orange County Register 

Chihuahua mix Piper is a calm, gentle girl

• February 22, 2025

Breed: Chihuahua mix

Age: 11 years

Sex: Spayed female

Size: 10 pounds

Piper’s story: Piper loves people, car rides, walks on quiet streets, snuggling and giving hugs and kisses. She is gentle and calm with an amazing personality. She definitely would prefer to be the only pet in the home, but lots of laps would make this girl very happy. She’s house-trained and crate-trained and dreams of a yard of her own so she can soak up the sun. She’s healthy, microchipped and up-to-date on vaccines.

Adoption cost: $100

Adoption procedure: Go to K9 Spirit Organization’s website and complete an application. You can also email Stacy at stacy@k9spirit.org.

​ Orange County Register 

What can be done about the grasshoppers in your garden

• February 22, 2025

Q: What can I do to keep grasshoppers out of my garden? They are really destructive!

Grasshoppers are tremendously destructive and difficult to control. In late fall or early winter, the female lays her eggs in undisturbed ground (open fields or grasslands, mostly). Once the weather warms up, the eggs hatch and the hungry nymphs start eating whatever they can find. After about 5 or 6 molts, they become bigger, hungrier adults. The mature grasshoppers live for 3 months and produce only a single generation per year. Every 8-10 years, usually after a particularly wet winter, you will see a really bad infestation that can last several years.

Unfortunately, there is no pesticide available to homeowners that is completely effective against grasshoppers. Carbaryl-containing bait formerly was widely used but is now only available to licensed pest control operators. The protozoan Nosema locustae, also used in baits, is only effective against one species of grasshopper, and only effective against the young nymphs.

Mechanical barriers, such as row covers, are only effective if placed before the grasshoppers arrive. Hand-picking is tricky (unless you do it in the morning when they are still cold and sluggish).

In this case, relying on natural predation is probably your best bet. Many birds, such as the Western bluebird, robins, kestrels, owls, roadrunners, chickens, quail, and many songbirds will eat grasshoppers. They are also a favorite snack for cats, dogs, and other mammals.

Q: Something is eating my lettuce. My backyard is fenced in, so I don’t think it’s rabbits.

It still may be rabbits. Check your fence and gate for any gaps — critters can squeeze through some surprisingly small spaces.

Is lettuce the only crop being eaten? If you have tasty things growing on a trellis and they are being eaten as well, you probably have rats (which are worse).

Do you see rabbit pellets in the garden? (That’s one of two things that rabbits do best.) Other possible culprits would be opossums or racoons. If you’re certain that your nighttime visitors are rabbits, a chicken wire fence may be sufficient to exclude them.

Sometimes you may be surprised. We thought the local scrub jays were eating all our grapes until my daughter heard rustling in the grapevines late one night. We shined a flashlight in the direction of the noises and seven little masked faces popped out.

Another year, we were puzzled because we had a beautiful pear tree that was producing fruit but was bare when it was time to harvest. We thought it might have been a neighbor (or raccoons again). One evening I heard a crunching sound coming from the tree. I retrieved my handy flashlight and saw about a dozen opossum tails hanging straight down, like icicles, out of the tree canopy.

Moral of the story—make sure you know for sure who the culprit is before taking corrective action.

Los Angeles County

mglosangeleshelpline@ucdavis.edu; 626-586-1988; http://celosangeles.ucanr.edu/UC_Master_Gardener_Program/

Orange County

ucceocmghotline@ucanr.edu; http://mgorange.ucanr.edu/

Riverside County

anrmgriverside@ucanr.edu; 951-955-0170; https://ucanr.edu/sites/RiversideMG/

San Bernardino County

mgsanbern@ucanr.edu; 909-387-2182; http://mgsb.ucanr.edu

​ Orange County Register 

Orange County restaurants shut down by health inspectors (Feb. 13-20)

• February 22, 2025

Restaurants and other food vendors ordered to close and allowed to reopen by Orange County health inspectors from Feb. 13 to Feb. 20.

Maravilla’s, 10401 Beach Blvd., Suite B-176, Stanton

• Closed: Feb. 19
• Reason: Cockroach infestation

AT230 Cars & Coffee, 230 E. La Habra Blvd., La Habra

• Closed: Feb. 18
• Reason: Insufficient hot water
• Reopened: Feb. 19

BB Lounge, 13135 Brookhurst St., Suite 8, Garden Grove

• Closed: Feb. 18
• Reason: Rodent infestation

Pho May, 16400 Pacific Coast Highway, Suite 117, Huntington Beach

• Closed: Feb. 18
• Reason: Cockroach infestation
• Reopened: Feb. 19

Efren’s Bakery, 24601 Raymond Way, Suite 7, Lake Forest

• Closed: Feb. 18
• Reason: Sewage overflow
• Reopened: Feb. 18

Alohana Acai Bowls & Coffee, 360 Camino De Estrella, San Clemente

• Closed: Feb. 14
• Reason: Insufficient hot water
• Reopened: Feb. 14

MasalaCraft, 575 W. Chapman Ave., Anaheim

• Closed: Feb. 14
• Reason: Rodent infestation
• Reopened: Feb. 15

This list is published weekly with closures since the previous week’s list. Status updates are published in the following week’s list. Source: OC Health Care Agency database.

​ Orange County Register 

Susan Shelley: Your power bill is so high, thanks to the state

• February 22, 2025

A majority of California voters have not yet realized that the people they’re electing are causing the problems they’re having.

There have been a few signs that the word may be getting out. You may remember the eruption of fury in the spring of 2023 over a new plan to charge electricity rates based on household income. The rage was directed at the investor-owned utilities that announced the new pricing, but the income-based rates were mandated by a provision in a state law, Assembly Bill 205 in 2022.

AB 205 was a lengthy budget trailer bill. Let me tell you about those. Every year, the Assembly and Senate each pass a stack of blank bills, containing only a bill number and one sentence about the intent to pass a bill later.

Lawmakers vote on the blank bills in the budget committee and on the floor. Then the blank bills go on the shelf until after the budget is passed. When deals are made in a back room at the eleventh hour, the text of every deal goes onto one of these blank bills as an “amendment.” There are no policy committee hearings, no debate, just an up-or-down vote to approve the “amendment” and then straight to the governor’s desk for his signature.

This is how they do it in California. AB 205 was the “energy trailer bill” in 2022. It went from a one-sentence bill on June 25 to 18,817 words on June 26. It was signed into law on June 30.

Months later, when the public found out about the income-graduated rates, some Democrats rushed to the microphones to denounce the idea, even though they had voted for it less than a year earlier.

Republicans had opposed the income-based rates and voted against AB 205, but in Sacramento, Republicans don’t have enough votes to block a sidewalk.

That may change. Californians are furious about their utility bills. The California Public Utilities Commission pushed off the income-graduated rates and substituted a higher fixed charge for most customers. Then last year, the CPUC approved six rate hikes within 12 months for customers of Pacific Gas & Electric. Public anger boiled over.

Gov. Gavin Newsom responded by ordering reports. On Oct. 30, he directed the CPUC and the California Energy Commission to report back to him by Jan. 1 with a list of ways to lower electricity bills for state residents.

Those reports were not made public at first, but Sacramento’s KCRA 3 Capitol Correspondent Ashley Zavala pried them out of the administration.

Essentially, the reports say electricity rates are high because California laws require it.

The reports read like a catalog of stupid choices and inevitable consequences. For example, the CPUC report says ratepayers are responsible for California’s “climate goals in the energy sector,” meaning your electricity bill goes up to pay for green mandates. At the same time, you have to pay to maintain access to the more reliable power that’s needed every day when the sun goes down.

Ratepayers are footing the bill for laws that require utilities to sign costly long-term contracts for solar, wind and miscellaneous technologies that meet the state’s Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS). The long-term contracts are no bargain. “In 2024, ratepayers paid an estimated $1.2 billion more than they would pay today for RPS contracts signed between the years 2000 and 2016,” the CPUC reported.

The report actually boasts that “electricity bills have been the vehicle to fund the incubation and commercialization of technologies.” That’s another way of saying ratepayers are getting the bill for research and development costs that will make somebody else rich, or not. Either way, they’re gambling with your money, and all you get out of it is a rate increase.

The report from the California Energy Commission brags about the Statewide Codes & Standards Program, which is paid for by customers of PG&E, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. At great expense, the program continuously determines and eventually mandates the latest “efficiency” standards in buildings and appliances. This, we are told, will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent climate change.

According to the CEC’s report, the 2025 efficiency code updates will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 4 million metric tons over 30 years.

For perspective, wildfires in California released an estimated 127 million metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2020 alone.

Why are wildfires so much worse in the last 15-20 years? Is it because not enough Californians bought new energy-efficient dishwashers? Or is it because land management practices were changed 25 years ago due to new “smoke management” regulations from the California Air Resources Board, which decided that controlled burns for wildfire mitigation caused unhealthful air pollution?

Meanwhile, the cost of wildfires and wildfire mitigation is another reason electricity rates are high in California. Ratepayers get the bill. And everybody’s rates are higher due to cost-shifting that results from customers with rooftop solar panels not buying as much electricity from the grid.

The reports demonstrate that California’s laws are causing California’s problems. The regulators are just the bearers of bad news. So it was almost comical to see state senators grilling regulators in a hearing this week about the high rates, as if the lawmakers had no idea they had caused the problem themselves.

“The Legislature can also take statutory action to repeal or significantly revise mandated electricity programs that result in ratepayer costs that are higher than necessary for safe, reliable, clean electricity,” the CPUC report gently suggested.

Don’t hold your breath. California Democrats are determined to lead the world on climate policy, even if it takes every cent you have.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley

​ Orange County Register 

Larry Wilson: The anti-woke new impresario of the high-culture Kennedy Center

• February 22, 2025

Eight years ago when I was at a writing conference in Washington, D.C. I got in touch with a former staff writer of “mine” — when you’re the editor of a newspaper, the vernacular makes it seem as if you own your reporters — who’d gone from the education beat here to actually teaching middle school there. I asked him out to dinner, and he said sure — but that he also had tickets that night for Alvin Ailey at the Kennedy Center, so we could eat first, take the subway to see the greatest dance company in America later.

I don’t know much about dance, but I know who’s good at it. And I was super-excited to get a chance to visit the Kennedy Center, which I’d been hearing about for half a century, but had never been to. What a spectacular performance, in a knockout venue, the beating heart of American culture.

You know who else has never been to the Kennedy Center — not once, despite living in town for four-plus years?

Donald Trump. And yet now he’s installed himself as its chairman of the board.

Though not having darkened its doors himself, he told reporters after he purged the entire board that some shows in the several theaters there “were terrible.”

In a leaked audio of a phone call he made to his new board members, which includes his chief of staff and her stepmother, he laid out his vision: “we’re going to make it hot. And we made the presidency hot, so this should be easy.”

You know one thing that’s not going to be easy? Getting the famously cheap new board chair to open his own wallet and donate to the institution — which is basically the chair’s entire job. The billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein, who Trump purged as chairman, contributed $120 million to the Kennedy Center over 20 years on its board. And he oversaw the development effort to get other Americans to give over $100 million each year to the Kennedy Center, which is not some government department, but an independent nonprofit.

We don’t know much about what kind of theatrical and musical culture Trump is considering for his reign, although it is said he once considered getting into the mug’s game that is Broadway producing, and that he’s a fan of “Cats.”

Of course we also know that he likes country music and The Village People, both of which are great — his boys Kid Rock and Ted Nugent, not so much — but hard to imagine filling the hundreds of Kennedy Center performances a year with.

He did say that in his time as impresario the center is “not going to be ‘woke,’” and wrote on social media: “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA.”

Among the tens of thousands of performances over the decades, there apparently have been a few drag shows, not up the president’s alley. And the center did produce a children’s musical called “Finn,” the title character described on the Kennedy Center’s website as “a young shark who just wants to be his true self. He loves sparkles and bright colors despite being a shark.” Yeah, its upcoming national tour has been canceled already.

But the Kennedy Center is where Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg went to the opera together. It’s where former Vice President Mike Pence saw “The King and I.” Just perusing at random the recent calendar for the venue: Vasily Petrenko conducts Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony. Edgar Moreau plays Saint-Saëns. “Adept as a performer of Baroque and contemporary music,”countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen. “Set today in the ‘Shear Madness’ hairstyling salon, this record-breaking comedy is Washington’s hilarious whodunit.” Riverdance 30 — The New Generation. The New York City Ballet. A festival called Arts Breaking the Sky: “EARTH to SPACE will fill the Center with musicians and astronauts, poets and researchers, visual artists and engineers, actors and environmentalists, architects and astronomers, dancers and scientists, film makers and space designers.”

Oops. Scrolling down to Friday night, we see: “Liberated Muse presents The Soundtrack for Social Justice, a poetic and musical reflection on the ways we can manifest a world of fairness and equity where human rights are recognized and upheld.” Fairness? Too woke for words. The show must not go on.

Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.

​ Orange County Register 

Readers share their stories about the resilience of rhubarb

• February 22, 2025

In response to a recent column on rhubarb I received several emails regarding local success with this plant, such as the following from Chuck Aardema, who gardens in Bellflower. It is a testimonial to rhubarb’s durability and longevity.

“I have been raised around rhubarb all my life. My mother and father were great gardeners and fruit growers just in their own backyard. We had a large rhubarb plant in the garden all the time. My father hated the plant which he even tried to eliminate by pouring his car drain oil around it. Somehow it always survived. Mom, who had grown it in Minnesota, made cobblers, pies, breads, jams and other desserts from the red stalks. When mother was not able to live alone anymore we moved her into an assisted living facility. I dug her beloved rhubarb plant out of her garden and transplanted it into her sister’s backyard where it grew to even greater width. When her sister passed away I once again dug it up and moved it to our own backyard where it now has been growing for another 9 years.

“I have removed pieces of the root from time to time to give to other family members. My wife and I enjoy the stalks in sauces, pies, cakes, bars, and jams. Mom had her beloved plant ever since I can remember and I still have the same plant today. This week I will turn 78 years old so you know how old it is. I have it planted in a flower bed against an east facing wall. I keep it fertilized and well mulched and watered. It now reaches about 4.5 feet across and at least 3 feet tall with large vibrant green leaves. There used to be a large Dutch community in my area and rhubarb was grown by many. My wife once took a large quantity of cut stalks to a women’s auxiliary meeting and put a sign on them that they were free. It almost started a riot with the women competing for them.”

Note from this account that rhubarb can be propagated from root cuttings.

Doris, who gardens in Upland, describes her rhubarb adventure as follows: ”I transplanted an old ignored plant from my grandson’s garden two years ago. After dividing it and cleaning it up I now have about ten plants. I grew up in Wisconsin where we had it and I enjoyed it. But being in Southern California for the last 50 years I had never seen it. I still don’t know what I should be doing but it is thriving. However, the stalks are quite thin with a mild flavor. The first year when I transplanted them I created shade and they did well. The second year I did not shade them and they did well. This year I cut them all back and they are coming back abundantly. I have fertilized them with worm castings.”

A number of factors could be responsible for your thin stalks. Since your transplants came from “an old ignored plant,” they would be in recovery from the original plant’s neglected state. Furthermore, you want to pay attention to watering and organic content of the soil since plants in dry soil or soil lacking in compost may produce thin stalks. Shoots that are overly abundant, especially when first emerging in the spring, unless some are cut out, may not develop into thick, robust stalks. Plants that are less than two years old are often simply left alone. Harvesting stalks during this period would mean slower root growth since there are fewer leaves to send carbohydrate down below for establishment of a strong root system which would lead to sturdier stalks later on.

Peggy Stewart shared rhubarb and avocado growing memories and her own gardening experience as well: “My mother-in-law grew rhubarb in her San Marino garden in the 1970s.  I cannot tell you her specific growing techniques except that she watered well and used mulch. She also grew a legendary avocado tree, probably a Fuerte, whose fruit she counted at 750 one year. She gave it two inches of water a week and used urea for fertilizer.  I live on the bay in Balboa and have a small patio garden.  However, except for some lavender, I grow only California natives. So many grow on coastal bluffs and are happy at the beach.”

Regarding your last statement about natives being “happy at the beach,” we should bear in mind that the inland climate of most Southern California residents differs significantly from that along the coast. I have a serious gardening friend who tried to grow a ground hugging Ceanothus, native to the California coast, on a slope that was only 10 miles from the beach. For several years, this Ceanothus stubbornly refused to grow, exhibited some dieback, and finally had to be removed. Just because a plant is native to California does not mean it will thrive in your garden. You need to pay careful attention to each plant’s requirements for growth based on its habitat as opposed to the microclimate in your own garden.

This perspective is also important when evaluating the appropriateness of Mediterranean climate plants for our gardens. Mediterranean climates include, first of all, the climate of lands that border the Mediterranean Sea, but also that of southwestern Australia, South Africa, Chile, and Southern California. It is generally assumed that plants which thrive in one Mediterranean climate will thrive in all of them, but this is not necessarily so. Of all five Mediterranean climates, that of Southern California is the harshest when our combination of low rainfall and elevated summer temperatures is taken into account. What this means is that a plant which never needs to be watered in South Africa may require regular summer irrigation in our part of the world.

California native of the week: Before people started to design gardens with California native plants specifically in mind, there was dwarf coyote brush (Baccharis pilularis). During those long years of drought in the late ’80s and early ’90s, coyote brush was eagerly sought and widely planted as a ground cover because of its capacity to live in the virtual absence of water. People did not really know or care where it came from as long as it lived up to its reputation for growing into a dense mat and thriving a whole summer without irrigation. Coyote brush is, in fact, one of the most widely seen of all California native plants. It grows throughout the chaparral and canyons of our own area. The growth habit of coyote brush becomes flatter as you get closer to the coast. It is dioecious, meaning there are separate female and male plants. Only males are clonally propagated since the flowers on female plants are considered to be unattractive although certain larger coyote brush selection in full bloom — such as Baccharis Centennial — are a glorious sight during the winter season. Twin Peaks No.2 and Pigeon Point are the lowest-growing and the most popular of the ground-hugging coyote brushes, not exceeding two feet tall. To look their best, in the hottest weather, they will benefit from a single monthly soaking and yet, once established, will never need more than that and, in fact, will survive with no water at all.

Pleasant childhood memories associated with plants or gardening persist. Do you have any such memories to share? If so, you are invited to send them along to Joshua@perfectplants.com. Your questions and comments as well gardening conundrums and successes are always welcome.

​ Orange County Register