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Good morning, all. I’m in CA trying to take care of some of the needs of my mother who broke her hip. She’s 98 and in rehab.

But, gardens. Everything is very lush here in Central CA, but only because of irrigation. The ground is powder dry. Water restrictions are in place in the city — every other day, but you can only water before 7 AM or after 7 PMon your designated day. And not a drop of water had better fall on the sidewalk. This means my mom’s yard is brown.

I picked up a book to read at Mom’s — The King of California. It is all about how one family accumulated more than 200,000 acres of cotton land, etc. from 1906 until the present (plus 60,000 acres in Australia). I looked into the front cover and found the book dedicated to Mom from the author who happened to have been one of her students.

It is a fascinating tale (so far) of the Boswell family. I can’t believe how a dry tale (no pun intended) of cotton farming, water rights, and land acquisition could be so exciting. If my mom taught this Mark Arax (co-author) to write so well, I have to be proud of her.

One other observation: We drove south to the Central Valled from San Francisco. To do so we had to cross the South Bay on one of the Bridges. The San Francisco water was brown and grimy, whereas Lake Michigan is pristine, blue, and sparkling. I know the Bay is more shallow than Lake Michigan, but I think this is an example of the environmentalists who keep a dirty back yard and push their rules onto others.