This is the other side of the landslide that I posted a picture of for Six on Saturday a few days ago. As I mentioned then, it looked worse from this side. I suspect that it came down immediately prior to my arrival. No one else was aware of it, and there was no indication that anyone had tried to get around it or move any of its debris. It was just past my driveway, which is where Carson, the Roadmaster, was parked. However, because there are two households beyond it, the debris needed to be removed promptly. I did not want anyone else to do it, though. I wanted to separate the stone from the soil because I can use the stone to construct low retaining walls. Also, I wanted to use the soil to fill low spots within parking spaces at the top of the driveway. Although these low spots are very close to where the soil and stone was, and it should have been very obvious that soil could have been used to fill them, I know from experience that few put much effort into performing such a tasks in an efficient manner. Actually, they often seem to put significant effort into inefficiency. For example, the mound to the far right of the picture is debris from an landslide that occurred earlier. It is directly adjacent to a low spot that remains low because no one bothered to put any debris into it. So, now, there is a high spot directly adjacent to a low spot. Large stones were pushed over the edge, where they rolled into a portion of my garden below, bashed bark from trees, and are now where I do not want them to be. I hoped to avoid such problems with this landslide.

14 thoughts on “Landslide”

    1. I just snapped to and remembered that Brent lives in LA, and that you just were down there. I couldn’t find anything in your blog about his area, although I did find a reference to Ladera Heights — but I think that might have been a garden tour he worked on. I hope all’s well for him. I listened to live reports on KNX for a couple of hours last night; it’s horrifying.

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      1. His neighborhood is closer to Los Angeles, although the street he lives on, as well as the street that his parents lived on for many years, extends into the area of the Sunset Fire. Many of his clients live within areas that are now burning though.

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      3. Although they are a part of life here, they only started coming into urban areas for the past several years. The fire that went into town in Santa Rosa was horrifying. I had never seen fire do that before. An area of Santa Monica that was evacuated is very urban, with paved streets and not too much combustible wild vegetation. Perhaps we are planting too many trees within such urban settings.

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    2. Those two trees are over the driveway, and do not worry me. They are coast live oak, Quercus agrifolia. It is normal for them to grow in awkward positions. If you zoom in over the roof of Carson (the Roadmaster) you can see one that is nearly horizontal. The trunk extends like that for more than twenty feet, and is quite fine in that position. I will eventually graft a younger tree with a vertical trunk below its outer end, for a bit of extra support as it ages.

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    1. None of the tractors are there, and I will not drive any of them for the few miles on the road to get there. I do not really need any of them anyway. The road is cut into a cliff on the east side of the canyon, who will always collect falling debris. This is the most I have ever seen at one time though. The madrone roots that were holding it together have been rotting for years, since a neighbor cut the tree down.

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  4. Obviously the landslip there is a problem that is going to continue but I am glad I am not the only one who looks at big rocks and says I could use those!

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    1. There are others. The neighbor to the south took quite a bit from here prior to 2010. The neighbor to the north took a few more recently, and also encountered someone who comes in from out of the neighborhood to collect stone for his landscaping work. I am somewhat annoyed by that. Besides, it is soft sandstone that is not so durable.

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    1. They typically come down slowly, by dropping a few stones as a warning to get out of the way, and even then, much of what is visible in the picture came down after the primary collapse. Bits were still falling as I was clearing the mess.

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