Deborah Burroughs's (biodeb) Blog

  Last July, I carefully planted a "California Native Plant" garden. We live in a condo and our yard is fairly small (8 X 30 feet), but still enough room to have a little fun with plants and flowers. I spent a day digging, planting and providing lots of water to give the young plants a fighting c...

Do you ever sit down at your computer to read an email and the next thing you know you've just spent an hour clicking through various links to get to "important" information? I hate to admit how often that happens to me.   I've decided to give myself a time limit for reading emails and other info...

Community efforts don't go unnoticed. A wonderful group of people from Genentech, an Oceanside bio-tech firm, planned a day of hard (volunteer) work at the Buena Vista Audubon Nature Center in Oceanside earlier this week.       Genentech was voted one of the best 100 companies to work for by Fort...

Last fall, I began volunteer work at the Buena Vista Audubon Society in Oceanside in their California native plant garden. I became an instant convert to native plants. So, I decided to kill the grass in our backyard, and plant a native garden. Killing the grass wasn't as easy as I thought it wou...

Mt Calavera & Vista Now, we're talking... aaahhhh Vista. This is where I live, and I love this town. It's about 7 miles from the coast; but where we live, we get a nice onshore breeze to keep us cool for most of the year. There are some valleys in Vista where it can get fairly warm, but still our...

Mt Calavera & Oceanside In the late 1700s Father Juan Crespi arrived in the Oceanside area, and he felt the location was perfect for what is now known as the Mission San Luis Rey de Francia.   After the completion of the railroad from San Diego to San Bernardino, the city of Oceanside began to ta...

Mt Calavera & Carlsbad   The Luiseno Indians lived on the coast of Carlsbad back in the late 1700s-they lived on seafood, food crops and reportedly led peaceful lives-they worshipped the Great Spirit, the Sun-God. They currently live on a reservation near Palomar Mountain approximately 60 miles a...

We have had some devastating fires in the past several years here in So Cal. There has been much discussion about how to prevent this devastation in the future. One of the solutions has been clearing of brush around the perimeter of the home. While keeping brush cleaned up can help, it can also g...

Mt Calavera adds a bit of natural history and intrigue to the surroundings communities of Carlsbad, Oceanside and Vista. Not many people realize what the 513 feet hill actually is. For years, scientists have only been estimating how old the volcano is, but the North County Times recently reporte...

In a previous blog, I wrote about my top 5 things to do in the North County. One of the items on my list was a visit the local volcano.  There are only three of them in southern California and we have one right here in Carlsbad. This 513 ft volcano is extinct and poses no harm to the many surroun...