Ack, it’s been a month since I did a blog post. I know I’ve been running around like a crazy woman, but I didn’t know it was this bad.

I’ve been up to my ears in fighting a very bad restoration plan for the Bolsa Chica mesa in my weekly newspaper column, AND getting our Huntington Beach Community Garden up and running, AND having a block wall built on the north side of the house.

Comments are due on the restoration plan by March 17, so I expect my life to get a little bit more open after that. I’ve been working nearly full time on that project, writing a new column on the topic for the paper every week. There was a community meeting tonight that was somewhat rowdy. I’m a point person for attacks from the group, so it wasn’t very pleasant for me.

But I’m convinced that this is a damaging, unworkable plan that is bad for the ecological reserve so I’m fighting to modify it into a good plan. Unfortunately, the supporters of the group are a rude bunch. I heard that one person in back commented that she had never seen such rude behavior from grownups. It was pretty much what I expected though. Their presentation of their plan was all fluff and PR, no science, and they didn’t even mention the most controversial parts: wind turbine, solar panels, massive composting operation for 500 tons of plants a year, grading, disking, destruction of a protected plant (Southern tarplant), etc., all on an ecological reserve that was protected as raptor habitat and habitat for the Southern tarplant. Well, this isn’t the place to go into all of that. It’s a local battle.

The community garden is zooming along now that we’re in construction mode. We’re planning our grand opening of the community garden on March 26, so things are frantic trying to get the garden plots ready to go.  I can hardly wait to post my photos as the garden progresses.

Oh, my, and the block wall. Our old wooden fence rotted and was leaning precariously onto our side of the property, ready to fall down. It was also occupying too much space in my yard with its Leaning Tower of Pisa form. So down it came. Our contractor dug out the soil to pour the concrete foundation and heaped all of the dirt on our side. On top of my plantings and tree roots. My two composters got moved too. Things are an utter mess out there and I can’t get to my tool shed because of the piles of dirt. So not much is happening in the yard.

I did manage to get my spring garden of cool weather crops in before the contractors arrived. I have snow peas, a couple kinds of radishes, several varieties of lettuce, Lacinato (Tuscan) kale, Chinese broccoli, 25 leeks, 110 green bunching onions, 8 hardneck garlic, Russet and blue potatoes, 4 cauliflower, and 4 red cabbage. I even put in two tomatoes in February. But I’ve been too busy to photograph them.

I’ve had harvests every week, but too busy to post about them. I’ve kept track of the harvests (more or less) and hope to do a catch-up post pretty soon. I think that the Navel Orange harvest is going to be low however, because the oranges have been disappearing since the construction crew arrived to build the wall. I only had 7 ripe oranges left and was looking forward to eating them myself, but I wouldn’t begrudge those hard-working guys a piece of fruit.

The chickens are finally all laying again, although we’re getting precious few eggs from Worthless, aka Henny Penny. But her feathers have grown back and she looks pretty again. Sweet Henrietta is now quite tolerant of being petted and a great laying hen. Chicken Little is full adult size, still wild as all get out, and our best laying hen. So all is well in the chicken coop.

Thanks for being patient as I took this breather from blogging. I hope your gardens are doing well and that springs comes soon where you live.