Cool Green Expo: Tripping Around LA with Shirley Bovshow

Santa Barbara was like a scene out of an larger-than-life Hollywood bible movie last week . Five back - to - back storms slammed the Left Coast and by the time the closing credit rolled , tree diagram were snapped , house went dark , sloughy Creek surged and a tornado dipped its tentacle into my decidedly un - Kansan town .

I motor south on Saturday dawn to rendezvous with Shirley Bovshow , puritanical skies were back . On the plenty behind Ventura , confectioner ’s snow frost the mountains and hillsides sported a fine fuzz of emerald green .

Shirley is the mentality , grin and dynamo behindGarden World Report , an on-line garden television receiver venture that ’s apace establish an outside audience . I ’ve had the honor and pleasance of co - hosting a few show and contributing TV bits since its September 2009 origination .

We had a date with a conference center . More precisely , theGo Green Expoin Los Angeles . Our mission : Interview exhibitioner and sleuthhound for interesting report to share with TV audience and readers . ( The expo be active to New York City , Philadelphia and Atlanta in the next few months . )

On The route

allow ’s start at the beginning .

Good Omen : Santa Barbara , 8:45 AM : So I ’m draw out of my private road and take a nimble glance at the fuel caliber . “ Running On Fumes ” , it says . I get to the window and check for a tailwind that ’ll bobble me 70 miles south to Shirley ’s . No dice . To a gas station !

There , I behold yet another exercise of what happens when bad taste foregather power puppet — the ubiquitous aircraft - carrier - pack of cards pruning technique ( India hawthorn / Rhaphiolepis ‘ Majestic Beauty ’ ) . Excitedly , I snap up my camera , capture another subject for my Crimes Against Horticulture heading .

good omen : I hump being on the route on a parky forenoon just after a storm , sunshine-roof open , the heater blasting my feet , the Police ’s One World Is Enough cranked up to 11 . drab sky , puffy clouds … kinda like the start - up screenland on a Windows computer .

As my trustworthy old Camry crested a hill and started the next descent , I watched warm sunray make the pure soil . The immutable law of nature of physics being what they are , the moisture had no choice but to come up spookily , cloaking a faraway oak Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree in mist . So I pulled over and snapped this redolent stab .

I arrive at Shirley ’s beautifully landscape Woodland Hills home in good order on time and off we sailed . engulf in snappy conversation , the jaunt to downtown was over in a twinkling . We arrived safely at the LA Convention Center , spent the next 40 mean solar day and 40 nighttime circling aimlessly in the underground parking garage , no doubt sending our carbon copy footmark through the roof .

come out from the underground labyrinth , we flashed our credentials at the check - in desk and donned our press badges . well-chosen faces burst when you may get into an event for free .

There were only a handful of landscape painting and garden shower sprinkled among the bear wad - in cars , solar collectors and gray-headed water systems . Interesting as these were , I had just as much playfulness mull over how broadly some product think they can unfold “ greenish ” to include cad education lesson , mystic energy spheres and a gizmo that bills itself as “ the mankind ’s thinnest wallet . ”

But more about the fringes of “ greenness ” , and an uplifting keynote talk by Ed Begley Jr. , in my next web log berth .

Urban Farming In A Busy World

After Shirley whip out her ready to hand Garden World Report video television camera , I interview Christy Wilhelmi , founder ofGarden Nerd . We met a year ago on Twitter , but this was the first time I got a hug ! Garden Nerd is an LA - area fellowship that designs and build up custom food gardens , tender classes in home farming and provides consulting services for do - it - yourselfers .

I ’m specially fond to Garden Nerd ’s clever logo , a glasses - wear carrot . Christy ’s path to gardening is a delicious story , starting in an upstair apartment using containers on window sills , behind the sofa and the keep elbow room floor . If she can do it , so can you .

Opportunity Knocks ( On The Roof )

I love when an idea literally falls from the sky and someone is there with the smarts to pick it up and run with it . Peter Schulberg did just that after hearing a huge thump on the roof of his Melrose Avenue art studio . A sign company had just dropped a 14 ft . by 50 ft . vinyl hoarding onto his roof .

On the ride home we compared notes about our favorite movies and TV display . high up on both of our list were the now - defunct Deadwood and Six Feet Under series . And I mean I ’ve win over Shirley to rive the first time of year of Dexter . “What does Dexter have to do with garden ? ” you ask .

Bloodmeal , of trend .

Photo/Illustration: Billy Goodnick

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