Return from Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Posted on May 12, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

My column in the Huntington Beach Independent this week is about the hail storm that hit our rental car as a group of us photographers were driving from Nashville to Townsend Tennessee on April 27. We got caught in the periphery of a funnel cloud between Maryville and Alcoa, and were hammered by hail. The car was most likely totaled from all the body damage, but we were unscathed. I promised my readers more photos from the trip, so here are some highlights, plus videos.

We had five photographers from the Photographic Society of Orange County  in the car. We had about nine cameras between us, but we didn’t get one single shot of the hail that pounded us near Alcoa. Too busy worrying about staying alive. However, our formerly beautiful Dodge Caravan rental became one of the most photographed features of the trip.

The hood and roof looked like they had been attacked by a maniac with a ball peen hammer. The passenger side of the car was also severely damaged.

Magnificent hardwood trees reflected in the dented hood made wonderful patterns.

Every turn of the road brought a new vista of waterfalls and wildflowers.

Coming from dry southern California, it was a real treat to see all of the water.

We managed to find a few flowers that hadn't been beaten down by the storm. Here is a trillium.

Trillium also comes in yellow.

A penstemon.

Beautiful red flowers.

Great Smoky Mountain National Park is an ecosystem I'm not familiar with, so I can't identify many of the plants, like this flowering tree.

Flowering dogwood is a tree that I recognized.

Cades Cove was my favorite place in the park, and we visited every day.

Cable House and many other historic structures have been preserved so visitors can get a feel for what life was like in the 1800s in this part of the Appalacian Mountains.

Cable Mill still grinds corn and wheat, and visitors can purchase stone-ground cornmeal and whole wheat flour there.

Vic was frustrated by all of the strange bird calls. The birds were well hidden in the trees, so they had to be identified by sound.

This yellow-throated warbler was amazingly cooperative about being seen (and photographed).

It's only a robin, but it held still long enough to be photographed.

Canada geese were fairly common on Little River.

Wild turkeys were common sightings. These three toms were strutting their stuff, trying to impress a hen.

Squirrels were fairly common on the lovely grounds of the Highland Manor Inn, where we stayed. Very nice motel, beautifully landscaped.

Vic got this great shot of a deer in Cade's Cove.

He also got this photo of a mama bear resting in a gum tree swamp.

Her cub was up a tree, resting in a crotch.

Wildlife also comes in small sizes, like this bumblebee.

One of the most fantastic sights was swarms of black swallowtail butterflies, hundreds of them, engaging in a behavior called puddling. They require sodium, and get it from salts at the edge of puddles. They will sit quite still for photographs.

Butterflies on wildflowers made for great photographs.

We got up before dawn every morning to photograph sunrises.

Sunrise in the Smokies was a sight to behold, when the fog in the valleys was washed with pink.

I snapped this shot of photographers waiting for the perfect sunrise moment.

Vic was fascinated by these decks and patios on Little River. No houses at most of them, just a deck on a tiny strip of land next to the road for enjoying a cookout by the river.

I liked this suspension footbridge over Little River.

The food was fantastic. Here Vic is eating a cornmeal-breaded, deep-fat-fried dill pickle spear. They were delicious. We had bbq ribs, pulled pork, sweet potato fries, pecan cobbler, hush puppies, chicken and dumplings, turnip greens, grits, ham with red-eye gravy, biscuits, etc. Oh my, so much good food.

We returned on the day that Osama bin Laden was killed. I wonder if the airports were on heightened security because both Wendy and I were subjected to extra scrutiny at the airport in Nashville.

What a fabulous trip! I’d go again in a second, only without the tornadoes and hail next time please. To read about the hailstorm, see my column at HBIndependent.com, under columns, Natural Perspectives.

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Beautiful spring day in the garden

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

It was so pretty outside today that I documented my home garden, mainly “The Farm” in back. Here are some pics of what’s in bloom today plus things that I’ll be harvesting in the future if the critters don’t get them first.

I love it when the orchid cactus are in bloom. This salmon one is larger than my palm.

The red orchid cactus are beautiful too.

This "Thornbird" bearded iris is the second of my new iris to bloom. The colors are a bit muddy, but I like the tan and lavender. This one is a more prolific bloomer than "Clarence", which was a real beauty.

My dwarf Fuji apple tree has more blossoms on it than in the past three years, so I'm hoping for my first real crop of Fuji apples.

My venerable dwarf Granny Smith apple tree has more blooms than it has ever had before, so I'm hoping for a good crop of apples this year. I may even get my first Gala apple since it is blooming too.

I'm racing the birds and night critters to get the Florida Prince peaches before they do. I have lots of peaches but they're really small this year. I should have thinned them I guess.

By the back path behind the house I have my Fuji, Gala, and Granny Smith apple trees, plus a Santa Rosa plum, Florida Prince peach, and Red Flame grapes (which haven't made any grapes yet). This is also where I have my irises and roses, plus a Cleveland Sage (California native for the humminbirds).

The chicken coop is under the plum tree. The hens are enjoying some chard stalks that went to seed. They get a LOT of greens.

My little water garden in back is all filled in with plants. The irises are in bloom now. Maybe the water hyacinths will bloom later.

I don't know the name of the irises that grow in my water garden. They look like Japanese irises, but maybe they're called something else.

My three raised beds of vegetables have an herb garden in the foreground, and are surrounded by nasturtiums and fruit trees.

The red cabbage seems to be heading up nicely. I am hoping for a cabbage harvest in a few weeks.

The blueberries are nearing ripeness. We have orioles in the neighborhood, so it will be a race to see who gets to the berries first.

Construction of the new block wall on the north has given my lime tree more sunlight. The old wooden fence was falling over onto the lime tree and the poor thing has never given me any limes. This year will be different.

This is just one of the little limes that have set fruit and the tree is still blooming.

I bought two nice bean towers from Gardener's Supply Company. Blue Lake pole beans (seen here) are growing up one and Kentucky Blue pole beans (a new variety for me) are growing up the other. I like these space-saving towers so much that I may get another.

This is the season for teeny tiny avocados, most of which usually fall off the tree. Every year I say that I'm going to cut down that worthless avocado and every year I don't because I hope that it will set some fruit. Maybe the new block wall will result in it getting more sunshine and setting more fruit. I keep hoping.

The Katy apricot tree has set more fruit than usual, which makes up for the peach, nectarine and plum trees, which are pretty bare this year.

I don't think I have even six plums on the Santa Rosa plum tree, but they're getting to be good size.

I have only two Snow Queen nectarines (one shown here), and maybe a half dozen Panamint nectarines.

The August Pride peach tree has only a couple of peaches on it and a few more on the Babcock Improved peach. Not a good year for the late peaches.

One of the advantages of an all organic yard is that it's safe for birds, bees and butterflies. I was surprised to find this swallowtail butterfly that had just emerged from its cocoon (or chrysalis?) in the plum tree today.

This Sweet 100 cherry tomato is producing ripe tomatoes already. And boy are they sweet.

Our semi-dwarf navel orange bloomed twice last year. This is one of the later oranges that is ripening now.

I have three dwarf Eureka lemons. This tree is producing, but the other two aren't doing much. They seem to take turns, so it's good to have three trees plus the Meyer lemon.

I sowed green bunching onions a bit too thickly earlier in the year. I kept them all, spreading them out in various pots. I ended up with 110 green onions, many of which have been eaten by now.

The lone Fuyu persimmon on my new tree may actually be fertilized. It's looking promising.

The Garden of Infinite Neglect is looking neglected as usual, with kale, collards and chard going to seed.

I have a dozen strawberry plants in the Garden of Infinite Neglect that may or may not give us some berries. They're sending out runners, so at least we'll get new plants.

The only strawberries I'm harvesting are from my strawberry pot.

I had strawberries and peaches from the garden on my cereal this morning.

The artichokes are coming as fast as we can eat them. I had two for dinner tonight.

Snow peas are growing up a pea fence by the water meter. I make use of every square inch of ground.

These are the best flowers yet on the thornless blackberries, at least on one of the plants. The other plant is looking pretty miserable.

I'm growing these Summertop Japanese burpless cucumbers in pots. I have some Tendergreen Japanese burpless cucumbers growing up a new cucumber trellis in back.

Most of the front yard is planted in flowers. Pink Mexican poppies are in bloom now.

Hope you enjoyed this tour of our yard and garden in early May.

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Harvest Monday, May 9, 2011

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

Once again it was Tuesday, not Monday, before I got around to doing my Harvest Monday blog post. But at least I’m doing it. See the last post for photos.

Most of this harvest went into either a stirfry or a lovely batch of tabbouli. The peaches on my Florida Prince peach tree are really tiny this year; they went into my morning cereal.

The cauliflower harvest this week was great. One head was perfect and huge, 1 lb 14 oz, even bigger than the one from last week. The other two heads were nothing to write about. Go figure.

As for the Chinese Flowering Kale, I won’t be planting it again. I’ve grown two batches and both were pathetically tiny when it went to flower. I let this batch grow too long and the stems were tough and inedible. Or maybe we’re not supposed to eat the stems. I don’t know. But there weren’t enough leaves on the plants to make this crop worth growing.

Last year, I grew about 200 lbs of produce from my yard. I never did get around to adding in the figures from the last couple of months of 2010, so that’s an estimate. With my new community garden added in to this year’s harvest, I hope to be able to grow 500 lbs of produce from my combined gardens. But since we didn’t get our gardens planted until April, I may not make it this year. We’ll see. At least it gives me a goal.

One more summer squash sprouted at the community garden, giving me a total of 16 summer squash plants. I gave two plants away to fellow gardeners. That leaves me with “only” 3 yellow crookneck, 3 Lebanese zukes, 5 patty pan, and 3 Gold Rush zukes. The winter squash seeds weren’t as old as I thought, and I have 13 seedlings of four varieties sprouted at last count, plus three Amish pie pumpkin seedlings. All the Moon and Stars watermelon seeds sprouted, giving me 10 plants. I have about 40 corn seedlings up. Adding in the dozen or so tomatoes at the community garden, 41 garlic and 40 onions, plus wax beans, chard, mizuna, beets and radishes, I should have a lot of poundage of harvest. I hope to reach a record (for me) 500 lbs of harvest, God willing and the creek don’t rise.

Here’s last week’s harvest from “The Farm” in my back yard.

FRUIT

9 oz. Lemon, Meyer

13 oz. Peaches, Florida Prince

Subtotal Fruit, 1 lb 6 oz.

VEGETABLES

9 oz. Artichoke

3 lb 6 oz. Cauliflower (WOOHOO!)

4 oz. Chard

1 oz. Lettuce

1 oz. Mint

2 oz. Onions, Green

3 oz. Ryohuko (Chinese Flowering Kale)

1 oz. Tomatoes, Cherry

3.5 oz. Snow Peas

Subtotal Vegetables 78.5 oz. = 4 lbs 14.5 oz.

TOTAL produce 6 lbs 4.5 oz.

Visit Daphne’s Dandelions to see what others harvested this week.

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My plot at the new community garden is planted!

Posted on May 7, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

After two years of work getting a new community garden in Huntington Beach, it’s finally open. Most of us have our plots in various stages of completion, with only a few gardens still untouched. I expect to finish my spring planting today with beets and sunflowers. After that, it will be filling in the spots as things come out. Here is what my A-17 plot looks like.

Plot A-17, looking SE

My friend Judi is gardening in the plot adjacent to mine. We have no path between our gardens, only a board.

Plot A-17, looking NE

I spend a lot of my gardening time sitting on my garden bench. I store fertilizer and tools in the storage compartment under the bench seat.

Plot A-17, looking NW

As you can see, I built my raised beds in a pattern resembling the letter E. My plot is 14 ft x 20 ft. It should have been 15×20, but due to a fence not being where it was thought to be, the planners cut a foot off of a few gardens.  Mine was one of the ones so chopped.

I planted eggplant and bell peppers at first. I came back a few days later to find that bunnies had eaten my eggplant to the ground. With a very big sigh, I put up a wire bunny fence and replanted. Then Edison told us that we couldn’t have wire under their power lines. My wire was vinyl coated because I knew we couldn’t have exposed metal. I’m still waiting to see if I have to replace it or not.

The gravel parking area that I got for my plot was absolutely ungardenable. I built raised beds (and by “I”, I mean my husband), hired a kid to rototill and sift out the rocks inside the beds, then put in hundreds of dollars of soil amendments, mainly compost, redwood compost, and steer manure. I dug most of it in myself with some help from my beloved spouse.

After those of us who are attempting to garden over a former parking lot put in raised beds, Edison told us that we couldn’t have raised beds either. They are letting us keep them until January since they’re already planted. I built mine of redwood because I wanted them to last. Ironic, huh? So far I’ve put about $1200 into the plot, and that’s not even counting the seeds and transplants. I may still have to replace my fence and fence posts with plastic, and my redwood beds with plastic border edging. But my little garden is up and growing. I have poundage envy from those of you who are growing 500-1,000 lbs of produce. My goal for this year is 500 lbs from the community and home gardens combined. That’s counting fruit from the trees too.

I have 41 California Giant Garlic growing at the community garden. That should keep vampires away. Haven't seen any werewolves either.

I'm growing five different colors of bell peppers.

My summer squash seeds were old, so I planted twice as many as I wanted. They all came up, and God help me, I can't bear to thin them out. I have 15 summer squash plants. That should go a long way toward achieving my 500 lb goal.

Only about half of the bush wax beans came up, but I should still get a half decent crop. I'm also growing Cherokee Trail of Tears pole beans at the Comm. Garden and both Blue Lake and Kentucky Blue pole beans at home. I'll plant the scarlet runner beans later, letting them twine up the sunflowers.

The bunnies ate my first two Japanese long eggplant, so I bought two more. When I went back to the garden, I discovered that the eaten eggplants had resprouted from the roots. So I have twice as many eggplants as I had planned.

Tomato Row has Arkansas Traveler (a new variety for me), several Romas, Better Boy, Brandywine, Black Prince, Black Krim and Black from Tula (another new variety for me).

My new Fuyu Persimmon tree at home had one flower on it. It seems to have been fertilized, so I may get my first home-grown persimmon this fall.

I've harvested my first tomatoes already! These are Sweet 100s, a new variety for me. I can't believe all the tomatoes on that plant. I'm glad I only have one plant of that variety. I also have an Early Girl at home, and quite a few mystery tomatoes that came up from the compost pile.

Just to show that my first cauliflower wasn't a fluke, here is a second perfect head. This one weighed in at 1 lb 14 oz.

The mint is growing rampant and I still have several Meyer lemons, so I made some tabbouli.

Henrietta and Chicken Little are really earning their keep, giving us 10-13 eggs a week now.

Also at the community garden I’m growing winter squash (mini red kuri, mini green kuri, and mini blue hubbard), Amish pie pumpkins, radishes, mizuna (a delicious Japanese mustard green), rainbow chard, 40 onions (about 20 each of Southern Belle and Texas Sweet), moon and stars watermelon, Crenshaw melons, and both bicolor and white corn. The corn, Crenshaw melons, watermelon, three varieties of winter squash and Amish pie pumpkins are all new varieties for me. I don’t have space in my home garden for those veggies, so I’m excited to see if I get anything from those plants or not. Our community garden is really close to the ocean, so it may be too cool for some of those crops. Time will tell.

That’s a quick and dirty recap of my new community garden and urban home farmlet. Happy gardening to you all.

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Happy Easter, Happy Spring

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

As you can see, I haven’t gotten back to blogging regularly. Getting the new community garden up and running took an inordinate amount of time. That plus working on my own garden at home seems to have eaten up all my spare time. I’ve been taking photos, but finding time to process them has eluded me. So without playing catch-up, here is what my home garden looks like this week.

The first head of cauliflower this season was perfect, weighing in at 1.5 lbs.

Henrietta and Chicken Little are both laying again. But sadly, Henny Penny passed away last week of unknown causes. She hadn't laid an egg since last September, so maybe it was old age.

One of our lunches was steamed cauliflower with shaved parmesan cheese, plus black beans and greens with garlic and onion, topped with sliced boiled eggs.

The pathway in back is lined with irises, roses, grapes, ferns, and fruit trees (peach, plum, and three apple trees).

This is the first of my new bearded irises to bloom, a variety called Clarence.

My dwarf Granny Smith apple tree is in full bloom, but the Fuji and Gala are still dormant, as are the Asian pear trees.

My roses are in bloom, at least some of them.

This one is my favorite. It's either Mr. Lincoln or Chrysler Imperial.

My two veggie gardens in front are The Garden of Infinite Neglect and The Garden of Perpetual Responsibility. I've decided to name my raised beds in back "The Farm." They produce most of the food that we grow. The herb garden is in front, and our new block wall is in back.

This is about half of my radish harvest so far this year. These are French Breakfast and Dutch Redheads.

Here's a better shot of the Clarence iris.

Look what I found! An avocado that I missed. They don't ripen until picked. I'm thinking that this one will be good for Cinco de Mayo.

My salmon orchid cactus are in bloom now, with the red ones about to open.

That pretty much does it for what the backyard looks like in late April. On to this week’s harvest.

Harvest Monday, April 25, 2011

FRUIT

0.5 oz. strawberries

VEGETABLES

1 lb, 5.5 oz. artichokes

3 lbs beets (Chioggia)

14 oz. carrots

9 oz. chard

1 lb 13 oz. cauliflower

5 oz. green onions

2 oz. kale

14 oz. radishes (French breakfast, Dutch redhead)

TOTAL  8 lbs 15 oz. produce plus 10 eggs

If you had a harvest, visit Daphne’s Dandelions to post the results.

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Busy, busy

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

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.

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Harvest Monday Feb. 7, 2011

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

Things are tootling along here. I’ve been so busy with a new battle over a badly flawed restoration plan for the Bolsa Chica Mesa, that I haven’t had time to garden.

Bolsa Chica wetlands seen from the new footbridge at Warner Avenue in Huntington Beach.

Bolsa Chica Mesa within the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve

The weather in coastal southern California has been superb with highs in the 70s and nothing but sun, sun, sun. Actually, that’s bad because this is supposed to be our rainy season. We got 10 inches of rain in December, which was way too much. Our normal rainfall on the coast is only 12-15 inches of rain. Since January 3, it has only rained once and that wasn’t much of a rain. I’ve used half of my stored rainwater already and am going to have to resort to tap water soon to keep my garden growing.

I really need to post photos of my spring flowers in bloom. I have irises, paperwhites, camellias, a pink magnolia, pink cobbity daisies, purple sage and a lot of other flowers in bloom already. It’s starting to get pretty outside.

This is the sum total of my harvest for the week. It all went into a yaki-soba with leftover pork tenderloin and some other vegetables from the store.

Here’s what I harvested last week.

FRUIT

nada

VEGETABLES

4 oz. chard

1 oz. komasuna (Japanese green like bok choy)

1 oz. snow peas

TOTAL harvest 6 oz. produce plus 5 eggs

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

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Harvest Monday January 31, 2011

Posted on February 1, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

It’s past midnight, so technically this isn’t Monday anymore. I just finished filing my column for the newspaper, so this is when I have time to do my blog post. Who needs sleep?

Meyer lemon

I spent some time weeding the Garden of Infinite Neglect and the Garden of Perpetual Responsibility (GPR). Naturally, I didn’t get done with the GPR.  I also added some dirt to the Smart Pot in which I’m growing a third crop of potatoes. I find that I can get two crops a year in the Smart Pots, about 3 lbs of potatoes per large pot. I harvest the potatoes, add fertilizer, and plant another batch of spuds from whatever potatoes have sprouted in my potato bin.

My first harvest of homegrown ginger, about four ounces.

Good news is that I actually have a harvest to post this week, including the first of my ginger crop. I’m really proud to have grown my own ginger. I left some in the pot to grow more for next year.

Home grown yams all washed and ready for baking.

I also used more of my homegrown yams. They are so tender it’s amazing. No strings, and the skins are so thin that I can eat them. The photo above is an optical illusion. They look large, but it took three of those little yams to make a serving. I served the yams with pork tenderloin roasted in a citrus-soy-ginger marinade. I modified the recipe from one in this February’s Sunset magazine. Here it is.

Pork tenderloins roasted in a citrus-soy-ginger sauce.

Roasted Pork with Citrus-Soy-Ginger Sauce

3 T mirin (sweet Japanese wine)

3/4 C chicken buillion

juice and zest from 1 Meyer lemon

juice and zest from half a grapefruit

1 T grated fresh ginger

7 T soy sauce

Mix ingredients. Reserve 3/4 C of the sauce and pour remainder over two pork tenderlions (2.5 lbs) in a pan. Cover pan with foil and bake at 350 degrees F for an hour.

Mix the reserved sauce with 3/4 C brown sugar and bring to a boil.

Using a baster, remove citrus sauce from the roasting pan and set aside.  Pour hot sugar-sauce mix over the pork. Return pork to the oven and cook for another 30-45 minutes. Slice the pork and drizzle a bit of the citrus sauce over it.

On to the harvest.

4.5 oz. Lemon, Meyer

4.5 oz. Ginger

Total produce 9 oz. plus 5 eggs

If you were lucky enough to have a harvest this week, visit Daphne’s Dandelions.

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What I do for a living–and a Harvest Monday

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

Harvest Monday has rolled around once again and all I’ve done is work and watch TV.  This new flat screen HDTV with home theater sound really has me spoiled. Can’t tear myself away from it.

You may wonder what I do for a living (such as it is). In addition to writing a weekly column on the environment for our local newspaper (Huntington Beach Independent), I work very parttime for the Orange County Conservation Corps.

Thanks to statewide budget cutbacks in California, I didn’t have much work from the corps in 2010. I only work with the new crews and they didn’t hire a lot of new workers last year. Things are picking up here at the first of the year and I had two orientation crews back to back last week and the week before.

I take the “kids” on some sort of nature adventure and then we do classroom work. Last week I took the crew to Crystal Cove State Park and the week before we went to Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve.

This was a record large orientation crew, with 23 new corps members.

I about died when I saw how large a crew they brought to Bolsa Chica, 23 corps members. My normal class size is 8-12. These kids are 18-24, almost all are high school dropouts, many have behavioral issues (ADD, etc.), many have been in trouble with the law and many have gang affiliations. In my past experience, class sizes of 17-18 have been impossible to handle. I was not looking forward to a group this large, but they were angels. Most were engaged in the learning activities and no one gave me even a spec of trouble.

One of the female corps members hands the king snake to another CM.

One of the corps members shows a bat star to his fellow corps member.

As you can see, we do hands-on learning. I’ve found that corps members are more engaged and learn better if they have things to touch and handle. This was a great class.

The next week (last Thursday), I had only six corps members. We went to Crystal Cove State Park. Of the six, three had never been to a beach. They tend to stay in their own neighborhoods close to home. I expose them to as much biology and nature as I can in the short time that I’m with them. But I swear I have more fun than they do.

Crystal Cove State Park

Four of the guys held hermit crab races. Put two crabs at the edge of the water and see which one gets to a certain point first. Unfortunately, the crabs weren't aware of the location of the finish line or the purpose of the "sport." They pretty much did their own thing.

After the corps members went back to the corps for their afternoon classes, I hung out at the beach for a while taking photos. Here are the results.

Can you see the mossy chiton? It's about an inch long, oblong, and has some pink coraline algae at its upper right side.

Pretty patterns in the sand

Crystal Cove has great rock formations. Here's just one.

Willet

Sanderling

Black-bellied plover in winter plumage

Marbled godwit

Confused ladybug crawling in the wet sand.

California thrasher

American Kestrel male

Coast bush sunflower

Bermuda sorrel

OK, that’s enough nature. And enough making all you northerners feel bad. Yes, it’s beach weather here in southern California in January.

Meyer lemons

On to the week’s harvest.

FRUIT

19 oz. Lemons, Meyer

VEGETABLES

0.5 oz. herbs (thyme, parsley)

2 oz. onion, red

TOTAL 1 lb 5.5 oz. produce plus 5 eggs

I used a lemon, an orange from a neighbor, the herbs and onion in a French (whole) chicken recipe with a cup of chardonnay, carrots, and a bunch of the yams that I harvested last week. At the end, I thickened the gravy with sour cream and cornstarch and served it with rice-a-roni. Tonight we’re having the leftover chicken and vegetables with egg noodles.

I used some home-made watermelon pickles in some tuna salad when I ran out of pickles. It made a nice substitution. And I’ve used frozen spaghetti sauce for chicken caccitore (is that how it’s spelled? I doubt it.) and had some of my homemade canned tomato soup. Slowly my larder is going down, which is good, because one of these days I’m going to get out of my rocking chair and back to the garden.

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Harvest Monday, Jan. 17, 2011

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

I last reported a harvest on December 6, so I have some catching up to do. I’m afraid that my new addiction to using the Wii Fitness Plus and watching movies on our new flatscreen TV with home theater sound have virtually eliminated gardening for me. That must stop, because the weather is unseasonably warm and I am really itching to get back to my garden. One of these days soon, I promise I’ll plant my winter garden. Although it’s likely to be a spring garden now that it’s gotten so far into the season.

My gardening log from 20 years ago reported frost. But this week we’re having near record hot temperatures. Global weirding in action. My pink magnolia tree used to be in peak bloom in mid-January. This year it began blooming in November and now it’s almost finished.  I’ll need to do a “what’s in bloom in my yard” post soon because our Florida Prince peach tree is about to burst into bloom. I’m worried that this abnormal heat will cause my fruit trees to break dormancy and that the crops will be ruined when cold weather comes back. Gardening during these times of global warming is not for the faint of heart.

Our hens have finished molting and at least Chicken Little and Henrietta are laying again. But Henny Penny hasn’t laid an egg for months. Given her poor productivity through last summer and fall, I’m thinking that her laying days may be over. At least she’s a handsome hen again now that her feathers have grown back.

Since Dec. 8, the hens have laid 23 eggs. I also harvested 4 Eureka lemons (10 oz.), 3 small tomatoes (2 oz.), and 1 oz. snow peas in those darkening days of December, 2010.  But by now, the tomatoes have all bit the dust, so to speak. They were looking pretty dead, and although they will grow back from the roots in these parts, I pulled them all up.

Our citrus crop of oranges, lemons and limes is looking good this year.

Because my harvests are definitely sub-par this time of year, I’ll combine the first two weeks of 2011 into this harvest report. The harvest includes 2 avocados, my entire crop, and yams, the first ones I’ve ever grown. I grew them in a Smart Pot. We baked some of the yams last night for dinner and they were great. Flavorful and tender. YUM.

The vines were dying on my yams, so I harvested them. We got a LOT of yams, but they're pretty skinny. I'm not sure if they would have gotten fatter if I'd left them longer in the Grow Pot or not. I didn't want them to get fibrous, so I harvested them.

Harvest for two weeks ending January 16, 2011

FRUIT

12 oz., Avocado

4 oz. Lemon, Meyer

1 lb 8 oz. Orange, Navel

2 lbs 8 oz FRUIT

VEGETABLES

3 lbs 3 oz. Yams

TOTAL 5 lbs 11 oz. Produce plus 9 eggs

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