Diaz Lake, CA

We started at 7 am at Diaz Lake just south of Lone Pine. You can see the brown Alabama Hills behind the lake and in front of the Sierras. The Alabama Hills and Lone Pine area was a very popular spot for filming Westerns.

Reeds in the lake

Great-tailed Grackles

Yellow-headed Blackbird

View of Alabama Hills and Eastern Sierras from the visitor center south of Lone Pine

Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery north of Independence, CA

We enjoyed a group dinner at Jack’s Restaurant in Bishop, and spent the night in Bishop.

We gathered at the Little Green Church south of Mammoth Lakes early Sunday morning to caravan to the sage grouse lek.

Little green church at Benton Crossing Road and Hwy 395.

A series of forks and turns on dirt roads took us to the entry gate to the lek area.

The group hiked to the lek, approaching very slowly, and never getting close enough to disturb the birds.

Greater Sage Grouse males displaying.

The grouse disperse shortly after the sun hits the lek.

These are a few of the three dozen mule deer that we saw.

These sagebrush flats are part of the Great Basin sagebrush habitat.

We spotted a bald eagle feeding in the distance at the edge of Crowley Lake.

Ken Wells led us to a site where bank swallows nest.

The group needed to hike to see the swallows.

Convict Lake is a beautiful spot. 

A few people spotted a dipper in this stream. I missed it.

We finished the trip with lunch at Tom’s Cafe south of Mammoth Lakes.

The group found 103 bird species, a record for the April Eastern Sierras trip. In addition, we saw mule deer, coyotes, and beautiful scenery. This is one of my favorite vacation spots. From Lone Pine to Mono Lake, I never tire of it, never get enough of it.

Another good week for oranges!

The lime harvest is trickling down finally. I froze a quart of lime juice last week, and still have more to squeeze and freeze. I put 1/4 C into each baggie. I can see some margaritas and pork pibil in my future.

This is my last large harvest of oranges, although there are still a few left on the tree. I froze a half cup of orange juice with zest in a baggie, just enough to make a Moroccan orange cake. Since pork pibil also requires orange juice, I will be freezing more. It has been a good spring for citrus here at Green World.

The avocado in the photo above is the last from last year’s fruit set. The tree is in bloom right now, and I should know in a few weeks whether or not there was any fruit set. Our new neighbors to the south cut down the avocado in their yard, so there may be no other tree in the area to act as a pollen donor. But I may not need it. My avocado is a Littlecado, which in theory is self fertile. We shall see.

An abundance of bok choy.

I planted Joi Choi variety of bok choy last year and was really happy with it. I planted it again this year and am being blessed with an abundance of this lovely vegetable. My husband is getting sick of it, so I froze this batch. All 4.5 lbs of it. I hate to tell him, but there is still more in the garden, maybe another five pounds, maybe more. It is going to seed, so its days are numbered.

This is a rare visitor to our yard.

Fox squirrels are not native to southern California. They were introduced into LA in the late 1800s by some Civil War veterans, or to make those veterans happier. They have thrived in Los Angeles, and spread to Orange County not very long ago. They have established in Central Park in Huntington Beach, and we get an occasional one venturing into our yard since we live close to the park. I have heard that they can strip a tree of oranges, but so far this little guy just wants the sunflower seeds. We are far more bothered by opossums, which are also not native to this area.

I am finally getting around to starting my spring planting, but I’m way behind. I planted three rows of peas and transplanted three tomato plants plus sage and basil this past week. The peas should have been planted back in January. It is actually time for a second planting, but…. Being the world’s laziest gardener, I’m only going to get one crop of peas this year. So be it. Gardening needs to be about fun.

HARVEST for week ending 4-14-13

FRUIT

7 oz Avocado (last of season)

10 oz Limes

3 lbs 12 oz Oranges, Navel

Subtotal fruit, 4 lbs 13 oz

VEGETABLES

4.5 lbs bok choy

TOTAL PRODUCE 8 lbs 4 oz plus 26 EGGS

If you had a harvest, visit Daphne’s Dandelions.

This beat-up 3-bedroom gambrel cabin is on the market in Big Bear, CA for $64,000.

I have focused more on home this week, now that my cold is dissipating. I am finally getting my energy back, and am enjoying my spring yard.

This is a post about a harvest. But a harvest from the garden can be more than mere pounds of produce. A garden also produces peace, tranquility and beauty. That is harder to measure, but I hope that you can see it in these photos.

Our front yard is mostly trees, shrubs, flowers, and herbs, with a few fruit trees, bird feeders, and a small pond. This is the view from a bench on our front porch.

Yesterday morning, I decided to sit on the porch bench and take photos only from where I was sitting. It was an interesting challenge. My Nikon Coolpix P510 is a great little camera, with 42x zoom. It allowed me to photograph birds and flowers from where I sat.

In addition to the pond, we have a bird bath. The one in back is a used fountain dropped off by our tree guy. One of his customers was throwing it out because it no longer holds water. He thought I might be able to fix it. My first attempt failed. I will try Plan B some other day.

I got up off the bench to take this photo. After having this dwarf Valencia orange tree in its original nursery pot for four years, I finally got around to transplanting it into its permanent pot. It is in full bloom. I’m sure it will do better now that it is finally out of its nursery pot.

The Valencia orange tree is loaded with blossoms and it smells so good.

The strange looking plastic box to the right of the Valencia tree is one of our four water barrels for collecting rainwater. Our part of Orange County, California gets only about 11-14 inches of rain a year, hardly more than a desert. Any little bit of water that I can collect and use is that much less water that needs to be pumped down from northern California, and then put through water filtration and purification. Saving water saves energy, and therefore helps fight global warming. That’s what we are all about here at Green World.

Pink cobbity daisies

Louisiana iris blooming in the pond.

Light lavender Louisiana iris in pond.

Male house finch at feeder.

White-crowned sparrow

White-crowned sparrow

Pink cobbity daisies

Female house sparrow

Pink English daisies.

Ack! A slug! I didn’t even notice it until I was processing the photos.

Clivia or Kaffir lillies

Fressias by the pond with iris and dwarf curly rush and dwarf straight rush in the background.

Freesia buds in the oregano bed.

A bushtit after bathing in the pond. A pair has been collecting nesting material from our yard this week.

A male black-headed grosbeak stopped by on his migration north to fill up on sunflower seeds.

This is most of our front yard. The “lawn” is Zoysia or Korea Grass. Never needs mowing. No herbicides or pesticides go onto it either, so our yard is safe for birds, bees, grandchildren and other living things. The pavers help reduce the amount of water needed to keep the lawn healthy.

Hope you enjoyed that little photo essay of a morning in my front yard. I think that there are 25 different species of plants in bloom in front right now, maybe more.

I can’t believe that we harvested a bell pepper this week, but here is the proof. It set fruit during an unseasonable warm spell last October.

The bell pepper went into a scramble along with red onion, mushrooms, and an avocado (also from the garden). The navel orange is from our tree.

Here is our harvest for the week ending April 7, 2013.

FRUIT

3 lbs 6 oz Limes

VEGETABLES

3 oz Bell Pepper

12 oz Bok Choy

TOTAL PRODUCE 4 lbs 5 oz plus 28 eggs

I am slowly catching up on logging in my harvests to Excel. The total harvest so far this year is 32.3 lbs of fruit and 12.8 lbs of vegetables, plus 194 eggs.

If you had a harvest or to see what others are harvesting, visit Daphne’s Dandelions.

Prices are rising so quickly up there that I have probably been priced out of the market all together. There is only one left in my price range, but I don’t love it. At least not from what I have seen in photos. However, there is a lot that they aren’t showing in the photos, so it might be even worse than I imagine. I plan to go see it  later today.

Pink jasmine perfumes our patio with a heady scent.

Meanwhile, spring has sprung off its sprocket here in southern California. My yard is awash in blossoms of all kinds.

Freesias add their sweet aroma to the air.

The Panamint nectarine and Katy apricot are loaded with blossoms this year. Surely we will be able to salvage some of the fruit from the possums, raccoons, and other raiders of night.

The avocado is loaded with blossoms too. Fruit set is never as impressive as the blossoms would suggest though.

Even the Santa Rosa plum is putting on a show this year. We normally get NO plums. The critters always beat me to the 2-3 that set fruit. I am more hopeful this year.

I planted some perennial flowers along the front walkway.

The Garden of Infinite Neglect is in full bloom with a freesia border. The veggie garden itself is, well, neglected.

We have had orchids in bloom on the back deck and patio since January. The second batch of blooms is just now opening up.

It is such a joy to have such beautiful flowers.

We are being inundated with bok choy. I planted a six-pack of Joi Choi and it is rewarding us with bountiful greens.

I am down to the last few avocados. Incredibly enough, we are still harvesting a bell pepper or two as well. And the hens are inundating us with eggs, up to 28 a week!

This is Henrietta, our sweet Black Australorp. She is our oldest hen, and is still laying.

Scrambled eggs with avocado and black beans on a whole wheat flour and corn tortilla. Yum!

Or, how about fried cornmeal mush with maple syrup, fried eggs, and oranges right off our tree?

Did someone say ORANGES? This is what was left AFTER we took a bag down to our son Scott for Easter.

And these are the limes that we have left AFTER taking some down to Scott and family. Time to squeeze and freeze.

I am so far behind on blogging. I had hoped to catch up on my harvest tally today, but I am running out of time. I think I will just sum up this week’s harvest.

Harvest for week ending March 31, 2013

FRUIT

13 oz Lemon, Meyer

6 lbs 4 oz Limes

7 lbs 5 oz Oranges, Navel

Subtotal 14 lbs 6 oz

VEGGIES

1 lb 9 oz Bok Choy

1 oz Ginger

Subtotal 1 lb 10 oz

TOTAL PRODUCE 16 lbs plus 27 EGGS

If you had a harvest, or to see what others are harvesting, visit Daphne’s Dandelions. As for me, I’m off to Big Bear, CA for the day!

First of all, Hubby and I are totally caught up in a whirlpool of home repair and renovation. We don’t do the work ourselves, but dealing with estimators and contractors, researching options, and running to the store to make choices takes up my day.

So far, we have had new sidewalks poured at the side and front of the house to fix dangerously lifted slabs, a trip accident waiting to happen. And we have had the deck repaired, but it STILL hasn’t been sanded and stained.

This is the new walkway on the south side of the house, and the new redwood fence built by our new neighbors to the south. Our gardener pruned back the jade plants.  I may do something else here, like put in some vertical planters made of old wood pallets (using heat treated, not chemically treated, wood). I might plant some pink jasmine along the fence. I’m also thinking of building a trellis shade structure to shade my office window, the first window along the house. We definitely need a new gate. I think I can build one out of redwood and 2x4s. Which brings me to my next topic: woodworking.

Our garage work area with three new Lou-made drawers in the workbench shelves.

I have taken up wood working. I don’t know why. I guess I have been inspired by Ali’s work on Henbogle and am stumbling along in her footsteps. And then there is Tool Girl. What a cool nickname. I wanted to be a Tool Girl too. But I really blame this new hobby on my garden.

Two years ago, my husband built me some beautiful raised beds out of redwood at the community garden. Construction work was going on all over the garden, so he borrowed a cordless drill to build it. Then stupid Southern California Edison made us remove all raised beds, and I had to disassemble them. I needed a cordless drill. Didn’t own one. Off to Home Depot I went. I didn’t know a thing about power tools, but there was a whole box of Ryobi power tools on sale: drill, circular saw, reciprocal saw, and shoplight, with two batteries and a charger. And it came with a cool carrying bag. How could I pass that up?

This is one of the raised beds that I built for the front yard. Parsley, chard, cauliflower, cabbage, garlic, flowers and shadows are pretty much hiding the wood.

Well, now I had a drill, two saws, and a lot of nice redwood, so I decided to build stuff. The first project was three raised beds in the front yard, since my tiny back yard is already filled with fruit trees, chickens, and three raised beds. The next project was to build an outdoor plant shelf out of scrap wood from the neighbor’s home renovation project. The low shelves (plant stands) will keep my potted plants off the deck.

Wood Magazine 2013

Then I saw this magazine at Home Depot. Look at that cute little tool cart for the workshop. I don’t know why, but that thing spoke to me. I just loved it. I wanted to build it! Keep in mind that I have NO woodworking experience, just a bunch of tools that I had no idea how to use.

My next door neighbor was kind enough to show me how to use a circular saw. I cut the lumber to make my plant shelves (one is assembled, two more to go, none are painted yet).  At that point, I decided that my skills were not up to making the little tool bench on casters, so I decided to make box drawers to go into my existing tool bench. The directions said that the tool cart with all those drawers could be made in a weekend, so how hard could a mere four drawers be? Hahaha!

Step 1 was to build a box drawer with cut-out handle.

I am now on week 3 of the project and am building fourth drawer. One weekend, my fat fanny!

The box drawers have cut out handles in front and back so i can pull a given box out to get to what is stored inside.

Here is a drawer slid out to reveal the contents.

I hadn’t been able to reach the back of the shelves before because they were so deep (and I’m short, with arthritic knees). Now access is no problem.

I plan to fill the drawer seams with wood putty, and either put on a light stain or oil or polyurethane or something. Like I said, I have no woodworking experience, but I think there should be a finish of some kind on them.

My time recently has been spent in the garage, making sawdust, and turning perfectly nice boards into distressed wood products with nicked and mismatched edges and boogered-up corners. Hey, it’s a hobby!

But wait, there’s more. We are also in the process of interior home renovation. And when I say “we”, I mean contractors. We have had a new shower door put into the guest bath, and new bathroom faucets installed in the master and guest baths. That will hold the bathrooms for now.

On to the KITCHEN. I have have had “range envy” ever since Ali at Henbogle got a five-burner range with convection oven. Lust, lust.

Meet Big Bertha, our new GE range.

Turns out that problem was easily solved. I bought a new range. Our old oven was haunted. The darn thing would beep in the middle of the night, waking us up at 2 pm and asking us to turn it on. Sometimes the oven would turn itself on, which of course is dangerous. We had had it with that possessed beast. We replaced it with this beauty, which sadly sticks out farther than the old one. The kitchen drawers won’t open all the way now. ARG!

Our current kitchen with new stove in place.

Home Depot is solving the problem by refacing our old cabinets and giving us all new drawers, new cabinet doors, and new countertop, plus some custom cabinetry.

I may try to salvage these pantry doors by building a cabinet for the garage and using these doors. Seems a shame to just shred and compost them.

We have a new stainless microwave-hood combo, but were told to not install it until after the cabinet work is done. So here it will sit until the cabinet work is finished.

We chose natural maple for the cabinets and drawers. But this isn’t the style. We went with double Shaker, which will go with the Craftsman theme of our family room.

This is our Craftsman/Mission/Shaker family room furniture.

We painted two walls of the family room a light green and hung a mirror and some Audubon prints.

This is an example of the craftsmanship of the drawers that we are getting. They have chamfered (rounded) edges, dove-tailed corners, and are made of solid maple. The insides of the drawers are going to be fabulous.

We wanted a quartz (Silestone) countertop, but couldn’t find a pattern that we both liked. We compromised on Corian in Platinum, which is gray with white speckles like granite. We are getting coved corners on the countertop and back-splash, a no-drop edge, and a built-in sink of white Corian. None of those features were available in quartz. It should look gorgeous.

Ah, but the cabinet guys don’t do plumbing. They will leave us with a sink that is not connected to the drains. And since the tile with a subsurface is being replaced by Corian with no subsurface, the countertops will be lower.

We were told that it would take 4-6 weeks to get the cabinet work done. Then 6-8 weeks. They claim that it will take only three days once they start. HA. If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. And thus we enter Home Renovation Hell. Maybe we will have the kitchen back to functional by mid May.

Meanwhile, the garden harvests continue. Last week, I harvested:

13 oz Navel Orange

1 lb 4 oz Meyer lemon

5 oz Bell Pepper (in February! Can you believe it?)

11 oz Cauliflower

TOTAL

3 lbs 1 oz of produce, plus 21 EGGS

If you had a harvest, visit Daphne’s Dandelions to share the good news.

This link will take you to the blog of Brian, a real farmer in Northern Indiana who writes a fascinating blog about growing large scale crops like corn and soybeans. He farms 2300 acres with his father and grandfather, a real family farm, albeit on a large scale. That blog post has the ad run by Dodge during the Superbowl that features the late Paul Harvey’s essay on “So God made a farmer.”

I am not a farmer, but I grow food: hens to lay eggs, a mini orchard, and beds for fresh organic vegetables. I got 344 eggs last year and nearly 300 lbs of fresh, organic produce. I can and freeze my surplus for out of season use. I have always wanted a little farm, but at age 70, I can see that it is not going to happen. I call myself an urban homesteader. I appreciate the farmers and farm workers who grow the bulk of the food that my husband and I eat.

Apparently, Dodge will donate a dollar to Future Farmers of America every time this ad is reposted, so I’m posting it. I was touched by it. I wish that farming was really still done that way instead of being done by huge agribusinesses that cater to WalMart. All I can say is try to know your farmer. Look for locally grown food that is being grown sustainably as much as you can. Buy organic when you can. And keep on truckin’.

One of our new hens laid her first egg–with no shell!

I touched the membrane to leave a dimple so you could tell that this is membrane, not shell. With two new hens and three old ones, I should get 400 eggs easily this year. That is my goal. Barred Rock hens should lay 250 eggs a year, so I could very well get over 500 eggs this year. Bring it on!

Boneless beef pot roast was on sale this week, and yesterday was sunny, so I made pot roast in our solar oven. I don’t really measure things, but this is my best guess of what I did.

2.5 lbs boneless beef pot roast

1/4 flour for dredging and to thicken gravy

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/4 tsp dry thyme

2 slices applewood smoked bacon, diced

1 large yellow onion

4 small or 2 large cloves of garlic

4 potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

4-6 carrots, scraped and cut into inch long lengths

6 small to medium tomatoes (mine were frozen whole)

1/2 C good red wine (I used old vine zinfandel that was leftover from the previous night’s dinner)

1/4 C water

2 bay leaves

Peel and cut four potatoes and several carrots.

Slice a yellow onion and mince four cloves of garlic. Dice two slices of applewood smoked bacon and fry, then add onion and garlic. Cook until bacon is done and onions are brown. Set aside.

Dredge pot roast in flour with salt and thyme. and brown in bacon fat.

Thaw six frozen whole tomatoes on the “defrost fish” setting of the microwave. Cut in half and discard tough skins.

Assemble pot roast in the solar oven pan, meat first, then carrots and potatoes, then onion mixture, and top with tomatoes. Tuck two bay leaves around the edges.

Add 1/2 C red wine and 1/4 C water to pot and place in solar oven.

Preheat oven in the sun for an hour. Cook pot roast in the sun at over 250 for about 4-5 hours.

This is my Sun Oven brand of solar oven. I just love it. However, I started too late in the morning and didn’t get my roast in until 1 pm. There wasn’t enough sunshine left to cook the roast completely, so I finished it on the stovetop in a larger pan, adding a couple of tablespoons of reserved flour that I used for dredging. This was the best pot roast I’ve ever made.

The tomatoes and bay leaves were from my garden. I have a little bay laurel tree in a pot in the driveway and can pick a leaf whenever I want one as they are evergreen.

The nice thing about the Sun Oven is that you need very little additional liquid and the flavors are concentrated. The food comes out moist and tender. I can’t say enough good things about cooking with solar power. It saves natural resources (gas or electricity), and fights global warming. That’s assuming that you use it enough to offset the greenhouse gases that were generated in the manufacture and shipping of the oven. There is always that tradeoff. They are ridiculously expensive in comparison to a regular gas or electric range, especially given that it is just an insulated box with a glass top and aluminum reflectors.

If you used something from your garden or your stores of preserved food, visit Robin at the Gardener of Eden.

Our “new” chest freezer

In December, Vic and I acquired a used Frigidaire chest freezer for the garage, thereby fulfilling a long-held dream of mine. We bought it from an old high school buddy of Vic’s for $75. Not sure of the capacity, maybe 12 cubic feet? It looks like it will hold at least double, maybe more, what the freezer on top of the refrigerator holds, which is 6 cubic feet.

We cleaned it out and plugged it in, and I began bargain hunting for sales. I put four half-gallon containers of water at the bottom to fill up space and “hold the cold” in case of a power outage. It is now mostly stocked, with room left over.

Our new freezer has two baskets.

I have been envying the freezers of others for some time now, wishing I had more freezer room to preserve the bounty of summer. The real impetus was that my son Scott took a fishing trip to Alaska last summer. He had to buy a chest freezer to store all of the fish that he brought back. We have been bringing a few fillets to our house every time we have room for more, but we ran out of room in the house freezer over the refrigerator.

Lack of room is no longer a problem. We keep the fish in one basket, bread products in the other, Lean Cuisines in a grocery sack in the main body of the freezer, and boxes of pizza on top of the bags of frozen whole chickens (at 79 cents a pound!).

Since getting the freezer, we have been eating out less. Instead of visiting my favorite sandwich shop for lunch, I nuke a Lean Cuisine. Instead of sending out for pizza when I’m too tired to cook, I bake a frozen one on my pizza stone. I LOVE LOVE LOVE having a home freezer.

Call me a loony survivalist/prepper if you will, but I feel happier knowing that I have plenty of food on hand. Yeah, I know, if a disaster includes loss of electricity for more than a day, I’m screwed. But then I would turn to my shelves of canned goods, both store-bought and home-canned, as well as pasta and grains that are on hand. We have water stored in containers, a water purifier to filter water from my rain barrels or a nearby lake, and even a chemical toilet. We could cook in my Sun Oven solar oven, or the propane gas BBQ, or our propane campstove if we need to.

I feel well prepared for the variety of natural and manmade disasters that could strike southern California and temporarily disrupt delivery of food (tsunami, earthquakes, fires, riots, heavy winds, power outages, etc.) Speaking of power outages, we have them so frequently that both Vic and I have power backups for our computers. The power usually comes back on within a few minutes or hours. Our neighbor has an electrical generator, but he has pointed out how much gasoline it takes to run a generator for a day. Not sure I want to have that much gasoline stored in my garage. Has anyone else considered fuel storage for a generator?

Inventory list for our freezer

Well, I didn’t mean to go off on a rant about being prepared for a disaster. They strike everywhere, and it is important to be able to get by on your own until help arrives, which, as we have seen from Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, can be a matter of weeks instead of days. I think we are good for six weeks at this point.

An important feature of our new freezer is an inventory list. This will help us know what is in the freezer and how old it is. I know, Uber Nerd. I’m pathetic. I made a similar list for our freezer in the kitchen, which is where I am now keeping vegetables.

The only thing from my garden in our chest freezer right now is two big bags of frozen whole tomatoes. I made a pot roast in my solar oven today and popped a half dozen frozen tomatoes into the pot, along with a couple of bay leaves from my little tree, plus some potatoes, onions, garlic, carrots and red wine.

Let’s take a look at my January yard and garden.

Two mourning doves rest in our liquid amber tree on a gray and misty morning.

House sparrows and house finches crowd into the tree in between bouts of feeding at our seed feeders.

Seed pods of liquid amber trees become works of natural art in January.

A light rain turns nasturtium leaves into saucers.

Another nasturtium leaf with water.

I couldn’t stop photographing those leaves.

Last one I’m going to show. I had more.

The first nasturtium blossom arrived the last week of January this year.

The Mt. Hood daffodil leaves are more visible now.

Our old-fashioned purple iris seem to bloom randomly. My fancy bearded iris only bloom in real spring, not this crazy January spring.

The Florida Prince peach is bursting into bloom. It is the first of my stone fruit trees to bloom and first to be ready to harvest.

No flower buds yet on my artichokes, but I keep checking. The plants are looking good.

Critters of some kind got most of my lettuce, but a couple of plants that weren’t eaten too badly have managed to recover. I might get a few leaves.

My broccoli is looking really good. I needed some for a stir-fry last night, so I harvested this half pound head.

This is our olive tree after it got pruned. My Garden of Infinite Neglect (which hasn’t been neglected since I put it into a raised bed) is under it.

Remember the raised sidewalk I showed in the last post? It’s gone! I was worried that someone would trip over it.

These are the bad tree roots that were raising the sidewalk. Bad liquid amber!

Our tree guy, Steve Fifita, is also our concrete contractor. He cut out the root and saved it for me. I plan to turn it into a hanging sculpture of some sort.

Here Steve finishes off the new concrete walkway. The board frames are now gone, and it looks good. We will keep it cordoned off for a while.

So that is what has been going on at our Green World the past few weeks. New freezer, new sidewalk on the south, new section of front walk, repaired deck in back, vegetables growing, fruit trees blooming, and spring flowers everywhere. Life is good.

Our new neighbors to the south removed the HUGE cypress trees whose roots had cracked our sidewalk. This is our new sidewalk. New fence to come later.

New year, same old bad habits. I’ve been too busy doing other things to post a blog entry.

The sidewalk to our front door has lifted due to roots of our liquid amber (sweet gum) trees. We are having this repaired next week after the rain stops.

In addition to concrete work, we have had work done on the deck and both bathrooms inside the house. Also, my husband hired a cleaning crew that has been attempting to turn our pigsty of a home into something more suitable for humans. I would rather garden than clean, and it shows! The reason for this mad rush to get work done was my recent 70th birthday. We had a multi-day celebration with out of town guests. I may post photos later if I get around to it.

Peep and Cheep will be six months old next week. Their combs and wattles have turned red. Can eggs be far off?

This is Cheep. She is slightly lighter than Peep.

Miss Hillary, our two-year-old Barred Rock has gone into molt and quit laying. The next week, the Black Australorp named Henrietta, our oldest hen at age four (or is she five? I forget), began laying. I ran out of eggs that I had frozen last spring and actually had to BUY eggs even though we have five hens now. That seemed so wrong.

We decided to keep the olive tree. By “we” I mean my husband. So I had it trimmed this week. This is the before photo.

As part of my birthday celebration, I dressed up our front walkway with a new arrangement of succulents.

I added some new cymbidium orchids because the ones I have now are still a few weeks away from blooming and I wanted orchids in BLOOM for my birthday.

The deck work didn’t get finished. It still needs sanding and staining. But I needed things put back on the deck prior to my party. I added some new plant stands to dress things up a bit.

I used my new cordless rotary saw, cordless drill and electric sander to build a little plant stand using scrap lumber from the new neighbor’s home renovation project. The one on the right has little legs to keep my plants off the new deck so they won’t rot it out. I still have to build the one on the left and then paint them both. Power tools are fun.

The raised bed in front is looking good with broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, beets, and carrots nearing harvest readiness.

These are the best looking heads of broccoli that I’ve had in years.

I have a few bell peppers nearing harvest, but these are the last of the season, set during an unseasonable October heat wave.

I have a few avocados left from last year’s fruit set. I need to harvest them so I can prune the tree before it is in full bloom.

I have one small Granny Smith apple left on the tree that needs to go into a salad.

The navel orange tree set quite a crop last year, and the fruit is ripe for the taking. Ditto the Meyer lemon and lime trees.

I need to squeeze and freeze juice from the lemons and limes so we will have it in summer when we want cold citrus drinks. These are limes.

I managed to get some onions planted. Not sure they will all survive, but at least a few look like they are going to make it.

I’m growing strawberries in planters in the driveway, since I am out of room in the yard. A few berries are coming along.

Oh look, it’s spring already. My paperwhite narcissus are nearing the end of their bloom, while these double narcissus are at peak. My daffodils are just now poking up out of the ground.

My raised beds in back have three tomatoes that I’m trying to overwinter. I picked the last tomato a few days ago. The onions are in the middle bed. The farthest bed has bell peppers

As usual, I’m behind in planting my winter garden. I have no peas in the ground yet. Well, there is only so much time in the day. Speaking of which, I have to run or I’ll be late for work. Yes, I’m 70 and still working. No wonder my garden gets neglected.

Breakfast makings, all from the garden and our hens!

I am going to make an omelette with bell peppers and a green onion harvested this morning, eggs from our hens, and oranges that I harvested a few days ago. Then it will be back to wrapping presents.

ACK! Who did this?

We went away to Borrego Springs this week for a couple of relaxing days for our wedding anniversary. I happily bounced to my newly planted salad bed to see how it was growing, and unhappily discovered that some critter had eaten my lettuce seedlings to the ground. We don’t have deer or rabbits. We do have opossums aplenty. Did an opossum do this? Time to set the live trap again.

This is the rest of my salad bed, with some lettuces surviving, plus garlic and green onions.

View from the street, looking West at our house and my raised beds under the olive tree.

I really want to take out that old olive tree. We never get olives, it shades my vegetable beds, and it costs too much money every year to get it trimmed. I want it GONE. Then I can put in another vegetable bed.

Raised bed in front, looking north. From close to far: parsley, basil, chard, beets, carrots, garlic (4 kinds), broccoli, cauliflower, and savoy cabbage.

Our front yard with MORE fallen leaves. It seems like there is no end to the leaves. Our gardener bags them and I compost them over the course of a year. Garden gold.

Paperwhite narcissus are the first spring flower to bloom, and they are blooming now. I also have some purple iris in bloom.

I cleaned and filled the hummingbird feeders and began feeding sunflower seeds to the birds again. This is an Allen’s hummingbird. We also get Anna’s hummers. Our yard is filled with beauty, life and happiness.

The chickens say HI.

Here is what I harvested last week, all citrus.

FRUIT

1 lb 3 oz Limes

2 lbs 6 oz Oranges, Navel

TOTAL PRODUCE 3 lbs 9 oz plus a couple of eggs

If you had a harvest, visit Daphne’s Dandelions. And have a very Merry Christmas, if that is a holiday that you celebrate.