Between Christmas craziness, our Yosemite vacation, and getting the flu, I haven’t been posting my harvests on Monday, even though there have been harvests. So here are the results from the past two weeks.
Monday, Jan. 4, 2010
4 navel orange, 2 lbs, 7.5 oz
cauliflower, 1 lb, 1 oz.
lettuce, 3 oz.
1 yellow bell pepper, 4.5 oz.
4 lbs of produce
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Monday, Jan. 11, 2010
6 Roma tomatoes, 7 oz.
lettuce, 0.5 oz.
cauliflower, 13 oz.
collard greens, 9 oz.
1 lb, 13.5 oz of produce
Vic and I have stayed at Curry Village, the Ahwanee Hotel and the Wawona Hotel in Yosemite National Park, but keep returning to Tenaya Lodge, a fabulous resort just outside the park. With an ice skating rink, indoor Olympic pool and two whirlpool spas, a full-service spa, snowshoe rental, and snow play area, there is always something to do. This was our sixth consecutive winter visit there.
Entry drive to the lodge
When you arrive, Bell Captain Bruce Howard and the valets greet you like returning family members, setting the tone for a fabulous stay.
Installing or removing chains is a complimentary service provided by the valets, although tips are appreciated.
The complimentary valet service includes cleaning snow off the car.
A fresh snowfall turns the grounds into a winter wonderland full of fine photo ops.
Snow on branches turns them into works of art.
From majestic oaks and evergreens...
to manzanita shrubs...
to buried grasses, everything becomes a camera subject.
Even the metal firepit becomes a work of art.
After playing in the snow, it's nice to relax by the fire in the lobby, especially with a hot beverage.
We admired the magnificent 40 ft white fir in the lobby.
The breakfast buffet at Tenaya is not to be missed. This is only a small portion of the fresh fruit, hot dishes, and pastries that are offered each morning.
The model train layout runs through a gingerbread village that fascinates the children.
We were lucky enough to be at Tenaya when the chefs put on a gingerbread house decorating workshop. Nicole and I signed up and each got an assembled house to decorate.
Nicole and Allison put gelatin windows inside the house.
The twins were more interested in eating icing and the candies than decorating the houses. Nana was complicit, I'm afraid.
Allison did a good job sticking peppermints onto the roof. But when their Mom told them they couldn't eat any more candy, the twins hid under the table and licked icing off each other's faces. Silly girls.
It's a race against the clock to get finished, and there wasn't enough time. This was my finished house.
While the grandbabies were napping, Vic and I went for an late afternoon stroll.
The sunset reflected on snowy hillsides was spectacular.
Nicole signed the twins up for an evening of crafts with Santa and his elves.
The rest of us had a delightful dinner in the Sierra, a newly opened fine dining restaurant at Tenaya. Here our waiter Matthew makes a fabulous Caesar salad at the table.
The lobster bisque with black truffle crust was exquisite.
I had Filet Oscar, a 6 oz. filet topped with artichoke bottom, Dungeness crab, and Bernaise sauce. Beef comes from the Brandt family farm in Brawley CA and is raised naturally without hormones or antibiotics.
On our last morning there, I signed us up for an old-fashioned sleigh ride down a snowy trail behind a team of Belgian draft horses.
The destination for the ride is the stables, where we relaxed by a fire and had hot cider.
Vic held Megan up so she could pet the huge horses.
Megan enjoyed playing in the snow, a new experience for her.
All three girls enjoyed seeing the alternate team resting in their corral.
Scott took our photo after the ride back to the lodge: Papa Vic, Lauren, the driver, Nana Lou, Allison, Nicole and Megan. What a fun Christmas vacation.
(To read more of Lou Murray’s environmental writing, see her weekly column, Natural Perspectives, in the Huntington Beach Independent at www.hbindependent.com /blogs_and_columns/)
Winter skies turn the Merced River into a monochrome scene.
Wish I could say that my long absence from my blog was due to our fantastic trip to Yosemite. It wasn’t. I’ve had the flu and have been coughing, coughing, coughing with no energy. I’m just now starting to crawl out of my sickbed and am now ready to post some pics of our pre-Christmas trip to Yosemite with son Scott, daughter-in-law Nicole, and the three grandbabies.
This will be a two-part post, the first one of the park and the second of our stay at Tenaya Lodge just outside the park’s southwestern entrance.
Our first view of Half Dome and Yosemite Valley on a rainy winter day.
Western cedars tower over the valley floor.
Bridal Veil Falls in the distance above the Merced River
El Capitan framed by evergreens and fog.Merced River overlook
Merced River
Stormy skies to the west promise snowfall in the evening.
Every trip to Yosemite is different as the seasons, light and weather play a large role in how the park appears. While the park is known more for scenery than wildlife, mule deer and coyotes are readily seen.
Mule deer buck in antlers.
(To read more of Lou Murray’s environmental writing, see her weekly column, Natural Perspectives, in the Huntington Beach Independent at www.hbindependent.com /blogs_and_columns/)
This has been a good week in my coastal southern California garden. This past week, I harvested:
2 lb 2 oz Ponca butternut squash (3 small butternuts)
1 lb 1 oz Candid Charm cauliflower (1 head)
10 oz Millionaire eggplant (5 small eggplants)
1 oz parsley and mint
Not too bad, nearly four pounds of produce.
I made a warm eggplant “salad” with the eggplant, hothouse tomatoes, garlic, cumin, curry powder, fresh mint and parsley. It was awful. The eggplant was too mushy for me, but I have “texture aversion.” The flavor was good though, and my husband ate all of his.
The cauliflower was stupendous. I ate some of it raw, best I’ve ever eaten, sweet and tender. I can hardly wait to harvest head #2, which is getting close. The other two heads are still tiny.
Sliced lemons soak overnight in water. Then add sugar and cook. Sugar just went in and isn't dissolved yet.
I’m going nuts with the “Christmas crush” of things to do, and yet I picked today to make marmalade. I’m nuts. Definitely a candidate for the looney bin. Visit Thomas at “A Growing Tradition” for the recipe, which is from Gourmet magazine.
I tasted the marmalade as it cooked and was disappointed at how bitter it was. I added 2 tsp of ground ginger to hide the bitterness and ended up with hot and bitter. VBS. I checked another recipe and they suggest adding 1/8 tsp of baking soda to tame the acid. I did that and it became sweeter. All in all it was edible, but not delicious. After 1.5 hours of cooking it still hadn’t gelled, despite the fact that I had added the seeds tied in cheesecloth (they contain pectin). I gave up and added a package of dry pectin and cooked for another minute. That did the trick. I poured it into hot, sterile jars (I just run them through the dishwasher and take them out just before the dry cycle is over) and processed them.
Process jars in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.
12 4-oz jars of lemon-ginger marmalade
I’m hoping that the taste improves with age, which will give time for the flavors to mingle. And with that, I’m off for more Christmas craziness. Hope your Christmas is merry.
Christmas wreath from Oregon on our front door
Chrismas is almost upon us and I’m sure you’re all as busy as I am getting ready. We just got our tree up today. I haven’t put up a Christmas tree for at least five year. I just don’t do the Christmas decorating thing. But for some reason, I wanted a tree and decorations in the house this year.
Our Christmas tree is decorated, but the presents aren't under it yet.
Our tree sheds worse than a collie in August. It seems to have the ability to throw its needles. I no sooner clean up one pile of needles than another batch falls. And they don’t just fall under the tree. Noooo, they manage to travel quite a distance. I think when I’m not looking, this tree must be flipping its branches to fling the needles into the far corners of the living room.
Maybe it’s the weather that is making the tree lose its needles. While the east coast is getting buried in a winter snowstorm, our tempertures today were in the high 70s. These poor trees are cut in Oregon and trucked down to southern California, where they sit outdoors in the hot sun and dry out. I didn’t decide to get a tree until really late, when they were marked down. By then, they were already dried out.
Winter in our yard is an odd mix of autumn and spring. Our deciduous trees are on their last gasp, while some spring flowers are blooming, and others have just poked their noses out of the ground.
Leaves on our Asian pears have turned a brilliant yellow.
Leaves on our liquid amber trees range from burgandy to scarlet to orange to yellow.
The first double paperwhite narcissus are in bloom in back.
I am enamored of our new raised garden beds and never seem to tire of photographing them.
Our second head of cauliflower is nearing time to harvest.
I harvested our first head of cauliflower from our raised beds last week. I couldn’t believe how tender it was, with such sweet, delicate flavor. I steamed some and served it with butter. I ate a quarter of a head raw with lemon-dill dip. The rest went into the skillet with broccoli, lots of slivered garlic, olive oil and salt. I sauteed it on medium high heat until the vegetables were brown, then covered it to steam for a few minutes to complete the cooking. Delicious!
Cauliflower, broccoli, and garlic cook in Vic's grandmother's 100-year-old cast iron skillet.
I cooked this fully cooked half ham at 350 for two hours, putting on a glaze of brown sugar, dijon mustard and orange juice for the last 45 minutes.
One of the oranges from our tree went into the glaze for this ham, which was studded with cloves. Wish I could put the smell of that ham baking onto the web for you. I served the ham and the cauliflower/broccoli saute with a roasted sweet potato from my CSA box.
I love picking fresh herbs, fruits and vegetables for our meals right out of our yard. The seasons dictate our menu. And now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to wrapping Christmas presents.
Woven Christmas ribbons are works of art if you look at them closely.
In addition to Harvest Monday that is hosted for us gardeners by “Daphne’s Dandelions” in Massachusetts, there is also Macro Monday, hosted by “Lisa’s Chaos” Wisconsin photo blog at http://lisaschaos.com/. I learned about Macro Monday on Villager’s “Our Happy Acres” blog. But I am such a horrible procrastinator, that by the time I took my pictures and processed them, it was Thursday!
So here is what I found to photograph with a macro lens in my garden this week.
Newly planted iris and daffodils are showing signs of life!
Allysum is always in bloom, but in winter, there are no skipper butterflies or hoverflies to feed on it.
A few honeybees gather pollen from our rosemary bushes in winter.
One month after sowing, the cheddar cauliflower is just showing its first true leaf. The violet cauliflower just poked up out of the ground this week. Things in the garden are s-l-o-w this time of year.
I pruned back the pineapple sage after it finished blooming, and it surprised me with new flower buds this week. Global weirding.
My favorite macro this week (in addition to the Christmas ribbon) is this variegated nasturtium leaf with dew dropping from its pink picotee edge.
I buy a couple of pointsettias right after Thanksgiving to remind me that winter is upon us. Although they will grow year round in the ground here, these are disposable plants for me.
It only seems like we don’t have seasons in coastal southern California. We don’t have spectacular autumn foliage. We don’t have snow. We can have sweater days in June and shorts days in December. But we do have seasons, subtle as they are.
Our two liquid amber trees turn color and drop their leaves in December. Those leaves are like gold for my compost pile, and I hoard them.
We have winter flowers, spring flowers, summer flowers, and autumn flowers. Each season has its own palette of plants that bloom. December isn’t a prime flower month in my drought-tolerant yard, but I thought I’d show you what’s in bloom now.
Iris aren't supposed to bloom for another couple of months. This crazy "Grandma's Purple Flag" is blooming now. More evidence of global "weirding."
Most of my paperwhite narcissus that have naturalized are just now popping up. One crazy clump has already finished blooming. Global weirding.
Yarrow is both drought-tolerant and a California native plant, a plus in my book.
My roses would be in bloom now if they got more sun. I pruned them back in November and am getting lovely new growth now. They'll bloom later.
Bees and butterflies like this lantana. I planted it at the edge of the Garden of Perpetual Responsibility to attract pollinators.
Gazania comes from South Africa. It's drought tolerant and blooms year round.
Nemesia is one of my favorite flowers. These cheerful little things bloom all year long and naturalize, reproducing themselves so I don't have to buy more of them. Love this plant!
I had such a clutter of little plants in pots that I got this nice rack from the Improvements catalog to hold them.
This is my favorite place to sit and rock, listening to the fountain and looking out over my raised garden beds. Black phoebes and wintering warblers forage for cabbage worms, so there is always something to distract me from reading.
I also have lavender and rosemary in bloom, as well as one crazy branch of my Granny Smith apple tree (more global weirding). December is a slow month for flowers in the yard, along with the hot, dry days of August and September. But all in all, it isn’t bad. I’ve chosen the plant palette so that there is always some nectar for the bees and butterflies.
Spring comes early here, arriving in February and lasting through April. I can hardly wait to show you my spring flowers, especially after all that work planting bulbs and rhizomes the past month. Take heart New Englanders, Canadians, Germans, and others from the frozen north. Spring will come again.
(To read more of Lou Murray’s environmental writing, see her weekly column, Natural Perspectives, in the Huntington Beach Independent at www.hbindependent.com /blogs_and_columns/)
Today is not only Harvest Monday, it marks the second month anniversary of my blog. I was encouraged by Garden Writers Association to start one. Now that I’ve started, I can’t stop. It really is addictive. In 61 days, I’ve made 29 posts, and had over 1,400 blog hits from 46 countries. But I’m still a baby blogger, as in newbie, not as in blogging about babies. So much yet to learn.
It took me a while to figure out how to list blogs that I like on my blogroll. I was going to limit it to 20, but there are too many blogs out there that I like. So many good bloggers, so little space on the blogroll.
I figured out how to get the Clustrmap widget on my blog, and really enjoy seeing where my viewers live. But I haven’t been able to post a weather widget that functions. Seems that WordPress doesn’t support Java script. At least that’s what I think the problem is. If anyone else is using WordPress and has a weather widget, please let me know.
And now on to my harvest for the past week.
2 lbs navel oranges (4)
2 lbs 11 oz Meyer lemons (11)
4 oz Bearrs limes (2)
12 oz bell pepper (3)
lettuce
marjoram
sage
thyme
That’s nearly 6 lbs of produce this week. Not bad for a garden that’s the size of a teacup. That’s six pounds that didn’t have to be shipped anywhere, six pounds that didn’t contribute to global warming.
The island of Tuvalu is going under with ocean rise. Some Alaskan Inuits already have lost their coastal villages. Check out these dramatic photos by photographer/journalist Gary Braasch of Portland, OR. http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/pages/rising-seas.html
Do whatever you can, however you can, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and curb global climate change. The planet is counting on us!
We just had four days of rain, but today the sun is shining again. I snapped these pics earlier in the week, just before the series of storms rolled in off the Pacific.
Dwarf sugar snap pea seedlings planted Nov. 15
German white icicle radish planted Nov 23
Lettuce seedlings
Spinach, cheddar cauliflower, and red and yellow onion sets are up also, but the purple cauliflower crop is a bust. No sprouts. These are all in raised bed #3.
Raised bed #2 with parsley in front
Raised bed #2 is still magnificient with chard, lettuce, spinach, leeks, red and savoy cabbage, and cauliflower. I’m playing a waiting game with my first head of cauliflower to see how big it will get before I harvest it. I think what this means is that I’m setting myself up to harvest it just a hair before it bolts or flowers out or whatever the heck it is that a head of cauliflower will do.
Bed #1 continues to produce bell peppers. We’ve tried for years to grow bell peppers with no success. They were always thin-skinned and bitter. This year we’re getting perfect bell peppers. I sprayed the plants with blossom set (a plant hormone) early in the season and again in the fall. I don’t know if that is the difference, or the type I planted. I got a 6-pack of mixed color peppers from Lowe’s and they’ve produced peppers all summer and are still going strong. I have about 20 more coming along in various stages of growth.
Navel oranges
Winter is time for citrus in our neck of the woods. We have navel oranges, Eureka and Meyer lemons, and Bearrs limes ready for harvest. The valencia oranges will ripen later in the season.
Fruit trees grow all along our back fence. Here are Fuji, Gala, and Granny Smith apple trees, plus a Florida Prince peach and a Santa Rosa plum.
We have about 20 fruit trees, some in the ground and some in pots, in my urban orchard. Some are dwarf, some semi-dwarf, and some are full-sized. The apple and stone fruit trees still have most of their leaves, but they’ll fall soon. I have some bird feeders here, and you can see the chicken coop (still no chickens! I’m such a procrastinator) in the background. I grew vegetables here a couple of years ago, but the trees cast too much shade now for anything except lettuce.
I do some container gardening in front, where there is more sun.
Green onions in a terra cotta bowl
Bok Choy in a bowl
I grow green onions year round in these terra cotta bowls, planting them from seed. Baby bok choy also does nicely in these bowls, but it’s a cool weather crop only. Once the bok choy is eaten, this bowl will revert to green onion production. I use the potting soil over and over, just adding Sure Start organic fertilizer prior to each planting.
Rhubarb
The rhubarb plant is coming along nicely. Each leaf that sprouts is bigger than the one before. This is the first year in the garden for this plant, and I’m supposed to let it grow all year without harvesting so the root can get big and strong. But I can never wait. By February or March, I may harvest a few stems to put into a coffee cake. That’s the only way I like to eat rhubarb.
Artichokes in the Garden of Perpetual Responsibility
I really only wanted a couple of artichoke plants, so I bought two of them, thinking that my perennial artichokes had completey died. Turned out that they were just dormant. Then it turned out that the pots that I bought had two artichokes each. Then, inexplicably, I bought another pot of artichokes. I’ve ended up with eight artichoke plants, more than I really intended. Oh well, I like artichokes.
See all that lush growth around the artichokes? They’re mostly weeds. Somewhere hidden in those weeds are about 30 red onions that I planted from sets around the artichokes. I’ve not tried onions in this bed before. This plot gets precious little sun in the winter, as the neighbor’s trees to the south shade it pretty completely. Now that I have a break in the rain, I need to get to work on those weeds and see if I can find the onions.
Kale
Collards
Savoy cabbage struggling to make a head
An eggplant defying the season
I think I’ll name my garden by the front sidewalk the Garden of Infinite Neglect. Since I got my lovely raised beds in back from Gardener’s Supply Company, I’ve pretty much ignored it. Yet it continues to provide us with kale and collards. If I bothered to harvest them, there are eggplants and beets ready as well. There is always more to do in a southern California garden. It never sleeps.
(To read more of Lou Murray’s environmental writing, see her weekly column, Natural Perspectives, in the Huntington Beach Independent at www.hbindependent.com /blogs_and_columns/)
Bed #3, the farthest one to the left, is now planted. I've installed the additional hardware and art on the chicken coop. Progress is slow.
Oh boy, it’s raining today. We get so little rain here in coastal southern California, that it’s cause to celebrate. I have some containers set out to collect rain from the roof because I STILL don’t have my rain barrel hooked up to the gutter’s downspout. I’m an incredible procrastinator, and the older I get, the slower I go.
Cauliflower will be ready to pick very soon.
I harvested kale yesterday to go into a nice dish of sauteed kale with 1/3 C pecans, 1/4 C orange-flavored cranberries and a splash of raspberry vinegar. Earlier in the week, I picked 3 bok choy and 3 bell peppers to go into a turkey stir-fry.
I planted this kale in the fall of 2007, and it's still growing. It flowered last summer. I collected seeds, cut the flower stalks, and it continues to produce nice kale leaves.
Here’s the harvest for this week:
7 oz. kale, Scotch blue curled
14 oz. bell peppers (3)
1 oz baby bok choy (3)
I grow baby bok choy in 15" shallow terra cotta bowls. I harvest the first ones as tiny babies, leaving a few to get larger.
If you harvested anything this week, visit Daphne’s Dandelions and post your harvest on Mr. Linky.
In southern California, it’s also planting season for cool weather vegetables. This week I planted Kailaan and Komatsuna Japanese greens. Both are new plants for me, but the seed is old. Not sure if they’ll sprout or not. Last week, I planted parsley and German white icicle radishes. The week before that I planted raised bed #3 with onions, snow peas, lettuce, spinach and cauliflower.
I planted the seeds for this savoy cabbage last January. The plants stayed tiny all summer and didn't start to really grow and head up until fall. They should be ready to harvest in a few more weeks.
(To read more of Lou Murray’s environmental writing, see her weekly column, Natural Perspectives, in the Huntington Beach Independent at www.hbindependent.com /blogs_and_columns/)
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Lou Murray's Green World 
