"Cry Havoc And Let Slip The Dogs..."

Of Washington?  The Huskies beat the Nebraska Cornhuskers?  Too bad I didn't watch that Holiday Bowl game.  We did, however, sit through the half-time fireworks because the stadium is right down the hill from our house and the cats all wake up and run for cover whenever the popping and booming starts.  It sounded louder than usual last night, for some reason.

The really important thing about last night was that it did not freeze after all, so the plants are safe.

Pine Tree Branches "Before"

We're continuing with the back yard project this week.  Last week we had the overhanging branches of the neighbor's pine tree trimmed off and the big Jade plant taken out; it looks almost bare out there behind the garage now.

Greg and Brian are also making good progress toward preparing the area behind the fence to put in a retaining wall and walkway up against the bank, and ultimately we will probably put in a mini orchard in that area to help with additional erosion control.  We want to get more root mass back in there to keep the soil in place, especially since we've been hearing about landslides and hillside collapse in the area.  There's no question that the ground is saturated and it will undoubtedly take it a while to dry out.

As far as we can tell, there hasn't been any more slippage on the slope behind the hedge, but it may be a while before we know for sure.  The ground is so soft right now that we're reluctant to walk around back there too much.

Pine Tree "After"

"Now Is The Winter Of Our Discontent..."

I just couldn't resist using that line, after seeing Geoffrey Rush deliver it in the marvelous movie, The King's Speech yesterday.  There's no "son of York" around here, but there was plenty of San Diego sunshine today, which allowed us to dry out slightly from all the rain we've been having.

Cover Crop Coming Along Nicely

However, tonight is supposed to show us that San Diego really does have a winter; the forecast tonight indicates that it may get down close to freezing.  Cindy is very concerned about this and went out to do what she could to protect the more vulnerable plants.  She re-covered the cover crop, which has been coming along nicely and strung Christmas lights in the dwarf lime and alleged orange trees (see "Of Lemons and Limes" and "When Life Hands You Lemons" in August 2010) in the hope that the warmth from the bulbs will keep the trees warm enough to keep from freezing.  I'm not sure that will work because those tiny bulbs don't seem to put out a lot of heat, but we'll hope it's sufficient to prevent the fruit and trees from freezing.

Covered Cover Crop and Christmas Lights

She also covered up her worm bins and moved the Asclepia (with caterpillars) closer to the house.   So we've done what we can for them all and we'll see what happens.

Codependent to Caterpillars

Monarch Butterfly Caterpillar on Asclepia

That would be us.  After the fiasco of the Monarch butterfly caterpillars on the Asclepia bush in the back yard, when the Scrub Jays picked off the last of the Monarch caterpillars, we moved that bush to the front yard and ran out and bought three more small Asclepias because a new lot of caterpillars were rapidly stripping what was left of the leaves off the original bush.  Then more Monarchs visited the new bushes and laid eggs.

Asclepia Protective Fencing

We originally tried to protect the new caterpillars by using some plastic fencing around the bush, thinking that critters were getting at them, but we quickly discovered that the caterpillars were getting confused and climbing on the green fencing instead of staying on the Asclepia.  We were concerned that they would not find their way back to the Asclepia to get the food they need to thrive, so we took it off and that was the end of the protective fencing  experiment.  It looked pretty peculiar anyway, so we weren't sorry to see it go.  I can't figure out how to re-size this picture, but it's easy to see how ugly it was.

Since we moved the old plant and the three new ones to the front yard, we've had a resurgence of the caterpillars.  I counted seventeen of them one day last week.  Most of them seem to have survived the heavy rains of the last week.

The problem recently has been that all four of the plants, in addition to losing leaves to the voracious appetite of the caterpillars, were heavily infested with aphids.  There were also several very happy Lady Bugs, busily chowing down on the aphid buffet, but they really couldn't really keep up with the numerous aphids, which would eventually kill the plants unless we do something about them.

So today Cindy farmed out about ten of the larva to a neighbor who also has Asclepia, bought a couple of new Asclepia plants, complete with their own caterpillars, moved the remaining four of our caterpillars to the new plants, and cleaned the aphids off the first group of plants.  She put the new plants next to the Bougainvillea so that the caterpillars have something to climb up on to form their chrysalises.  Apparently they prefer to create the chrysalis on some other plant, which is probably wise considering how likely it is that one of their fellow caterpillars would eat the Asclepia leaf the chrysalis was on.  Now they have a place to make the chrysalises, so we're hoping we'll eventually see the whole Monarch butterfly process.

Walks Like a Duck

Waddle

I always thought a waddle was what a duck did, but it turns out it's a 25 foot long mesh bag filled with rice straw that helps with erosion control.

Cindy and I struggled to get it out of the car and into the backyard when we bought it a couple of weeks ago.  We were covered with rice straw and dust by the time we got it into place on the edge of the canyon.   Greg and Brian heaved it around like it was nothing, but even when it's dry it weighs a lot, and now that it's wet, it probably weighs a lot more.  We're hoping it will help slow down the erosion of the edge of the canyon.

One thing is for sure:  it's not going anywhere as long as it's wet.

Oh, yes, and GO DUCKS!!!  BEAT AUBURN!!!  QUACK QUACK QUACK!

Chinaberry Tree

Chinaberry Tree in December

It's still raining here.  The ground is so sodden now that we are seriously concerned about erosion.  The Chinaberry tree is our bellwether--it clings to the edge of the canyon, and as long as it's there we know most of our yard is still there.  The canyon drops away so steeply that its roots are being steadily undermined, and some day it may go.  We get up and check to see if the tree's still there whenever we've had a lot of rain.

It's the tree in the background of this picture.  I deliberately shot it this way so we can have a marker, in the form of the white patio roof post, to check on whether the tree is still upright or if it's leaning more to the right and beginning to slide into the canyon.  The canyon drops away abruptly just to the right of the tree and just behind the boxwood hedge.

It's a great old tree.  It's clearly been around a long time.  A much larger branch evidently cracked off of the left hand side some years ago, but the tree keeps on thriving.  It's a survivor and we hope we can save it.

Chinaberry Tree in September

The Pineapple Express Comes to Town

The tropical weather formation known as the "Pineapple Express" has arrived and is inundating our back yard.  We thought this was going to be a "La Nina" year, which would be a low rainfall year, but it's acting like an "El Nino" year instead.  Yesterday the wind was blowing hard and blew down a lot of palm fronds on the streets and yards, but today it's just raining.  And raining.  And raining.  At least with the Pineapple Express, it's relatively warm wind and rain, unlike storms coming out of the Gulf of Alaska.

We've had so much rain the last couple of days that the planter around the garage is full of water and the area behind the garage is so sodden that you sink in a couple of inches if you step in certain areas back there.  Roy's guys showed up to trim the pine tree branches today in spite of the rain; they would not have been able to do it if the wind had been as strong as it was yesterday, but rain wasn't a problem for them.

Bring Me A Shrubbery--Part Deux

Apparently we are not the only household to receive a love-note from the city about cutting back our vegetation.  Several of our neighbors have also received similar letters; some are doing something about it and some seem to be ignoring them.  Some just seem to be dazed and confused.

Our neighbor Meredith came down to borrow some balsamic vinegar last night and said she had been chopping away at the vegetation behind her house all day.  The guidelines on this are so vague we all feel as if we're trapped in a Monty Python sketch.  "Bring me a shrubbery!  No, not that shrubbery, the one a hundred feet from your house!"

Behind the Fence--Before...

Anyway, we've made great progress on it this week.  Greg Eubanks, our landscaper, is also a Master Gardener and has the knowledge and skill to make this a successful project, in spite of the fact that his truck burned up on Monday, incinerating most of his tools along with the truck.

Greg and his helper Brian tore into it all day yesterday, unearthing a rusty roll of chain link fencing, broken concrete, bricks and some ancient cast iron pipe, as well as an enormous pile of plant debris.  The brush was so thick before they started that the telephone pole at the back of the property was hardly visible.

The Same Area--After Clearing

Now the telephone pole and the ground are both visible.  However, now we have the added problem of potential erosion from the area on the left, which is higher and part of the slope down into the canyon of the right.

Part two of the project will be to create some terracing in the area on the left, probably with some railroad ties to create a break in the slope that we hope will slow down the erosion.


And, of course, we still have to get rid of the huge piles of plant material they pulled out of the area.

Part of the Debris

Hacking Away

Eugenia Hedge Before....

Yesterday we got to work on chopping back the overgrown remains of the Eugenia hedge to reduce the amount of fuel for wildfire on the north side of the back yard.

The Eugenia was so overgrown you couldn't even see the equally overgrown Oleander behind it.  The Oleander is right on the edge of the canyon.  It's nasty stuff; the Eugenia is a nuisance because it grows so exuberantly and requires constant vigilance to keep it in check, but at least it's not poisonous like the Oleander.  The Oleander flowers are beautiful, but this particular plant has black sooty mold, Oleander scale and the Fire blight that will eventually kill the plant.

... and After

So we hacked away at the shrubbery for a couple of hours and eventually subdued it.  We kept the little patch of catnip growing at the edge of the space, but now we're reluctant to give it to the cats because of all the toxic Oleander clippings we dragged through there.

The Eugenia looks much neater now, but we know it will be back.  Still, there is a real sense of satisfaction at putting is some effort like this and then seeing an immediate result.  That's one thing we like about the garden:  it's changing all the time, and there's something different almost every day.

Bring Me A Shrubbery!!!!

We're really upset with the City of San Diego today.  Yesterday we received a "complaint" from the city fire inspector, telling us we need to get rid of the shrubbery behind our house to create a "defensible space" for fire protection.

Trumpet Creeper Jungle Behind the Fence

The reason we're so annoyed about this is that we really are true believers about the need to create this defensible space to protect property from the danger of wildfire.  We had a fire in our canyon three years ago and we have spent countless hours and thousands of dollars since then to lessen the danger and create a defensible space by cutting down a thirty foot high Eugenia hedge, by cutting back the jungle of Trumpet Creeper and Jade along the fence, and by having debris carted out of the canyon.  We had also planned to have more work done this next week on the area behind the fence because we want to plant a mini orchard back there at some point.

We know that area needs work, and we don't need the city to tell us to do it.  What makes it worse, however, is that next week that very same city also plans to repave our street--which really needs it--but that will make it impossible to get the truck in to haul away the debris that we cut out.  Arrrrgh.

Pine Tree With Dead Limbs

They also apparently want us to cut back the dead tree limbs that overhang our new rain harvesting system because they are close to the garage.  However, the pine tree with the dead limbs does not belong to us; it belongs to our next-door neighbor who refuses to recognize that the tree is dying and should be taken down completely.  So we'll have to pay more money to our arborist to take off the dead branches and possibly a couple that are still alive, and try not to "kill" the dying tree.

Red-Tailed Hawk Loves This Tree

Birds, especially large birds such as this hawk, love this tree because the top is dead and almost completely devoid of live branches, so they have an excellent view of potential prey in the canyon below.  The reason they have such a great view, of course, is that the entire top of the tree is dead.  It is no longer living; it has shuffled off this mortal coil; it has ceased to be; it...., oh, okay, back to the story.

Eugenia Hedge to Left of the House

One of the things we did several years ago was cut down the enormous Eugenia hedge on the north side of the house, on the left in this picture.  The hedge ran down along the property line to the edge of the canyon. It was about twenty feet tall at the front and about thirty feet high at the back end.  As far as fire danger went, that hedge would have provided a path and fuel for fire to race straight up from the canyon between the houses and could quite possibly have resulted in both houses burning.  So we cut the damn thing down, and that was the end of it.  Or so we thought.  Unfortunately, we didn't actually kill the roots, so it continues to grow back, and Eugenia grows very fast.

Eugenia Grows Back

The remnants of the hedge are part of the shrubbery we are going to take out this week.  This picture doesn't show it, but the ground slopes away very quickly under the shrubbery and it's difficult to maintain a footing so you don't end up sliding down the canyon on your butt.  Been there, done that, don't need to do it again.

One of the reasons we didn't kill the roots in the first place is that they help hold the soil in place and keep it from eroding into the canyon.

Steep Slope Into the Canyon

And that brings us to another problem with taking out shrubbery behind our house:  we're on the edge of the canyon, which drops off abruptly behind the boxwood hedge.  The slope is approximately sixty degrees and there is no footing whatever on it.  Even more worrisome is the clear evidence of erosion on the slope to the point where it is undermining our chain-link fence in the upper right hand corner of this photo.  We have to keep enough shrubbery to stop the erosion, or our fence and possibly our whole back yard may slide down into the canyon.  The city expects homeowners to maintain a defensible space of 100 feet from the house, but if you go that distance from our house, you're over the edge and down the slope.

Besides the boxwood hedge, another plant helping to slow down the erosion process is the native California Lemonadeberry tree (Rhus integrifolia)  growing up from the edge of the canyon.  These trees act as spark catchers during wildfire and may actually slow down the progress of a fire by stopping wind driven sparks from spreading the fire into new areas.  We plan to take off some of the branches that hang over the boxwood hedge below it, but we don't plan to cut the whole thing down because we need its protection against erosion.  One of the main features of the Lemonadeberry is its value in preventing erosion on slopes and cliffs.

Another item that annoys us is the fact that the city has not met its responsibility to maintain the canyon.  When Cindy and her sister Mary went down into the canyon last February, they found that the lower end of the canyon is completely impassable because of the dead branches, logs and other dead or overgrown plant material.  Even where they could get footing, the vegetation was too thick to proceed.  All that dead or overgrown plant material is just so much more tinder for wildfires.  We'll do our part, and we don't have a problem with that, but the city needs to meet its responsibilities, too.

The Ants Are Marching...

Actually, the ants are always marching here in San Diego, just usually not in our kitchen.  We were out of the house most of the day yesterday and when we got back, Cindy was occupied with the new design for the back yard.  So when she finally did go into the kitchen, she was shocked to discover the wall beside the microwave swarming with ants.  Worse yet, the trail of ants led up the wall into the cupboard.

We spent a frantic hour pulling out boxes of cereal and crackers, tossing those that the ants had gotten into and putting the rest into resealable plastic bags.  We also kept mopping up the ants with a mixture of vinegar and water, and finally just vinegar when we ran out of the mixture.  The ant bodies were stacking up by the hundreds, but they just kept coming.  We finally put a couple of ant baits out, one in the cupboard and one taped to the wall--you have to put it in their path or they won't eat it, but if they do eat it, they will carry it back to the nest and it will eventually kill the rest of the ants in the nest.

Our "shop chic" faucet handle

But I'm afraid that definitely puts us into the redneck category, what with the ant bait taped to the wall above the microwave, right next to the sink with our vice grip faucet handle.  We called the vice grip handle "shop chic";  some of our friends think it's funny and practical, but others have called it "redneck" because of the rubber band on the vice grips.  It may look odd, but it works for us.

The ants we're fighting are the notorious Argentine ants that have invaded much of Southern California.  Unlike other ant species, or even the Argentine ants in their native Argentina, those in California are not genetically diverse and consequently do not fight one another, recognizing ants from other nests as fellow members of one giant colony.

The nests also may contain multiple queens, making them "egg laying machines" that contribute to the proliferation of the species.  It also means that if you kill one queen, the nest doesn't necessarily die.  And if the nest does die, more Argentine ants just move into the empty space in short order.  Sigh.

Busy Week

This last week was a busy, but very satisfying one.

Tuesday was the Master Gardeners' monthly meeting and silent auction.  Cindy drafted me to take pictures since she had volunteered to work during the auction, and it was pretty revealing:  I discovered that what counts with the MGs is food, drink and.... oh, yeah, plants.

Then it was clean the house, prepare more food and drink, and celebrate Thanksgiving with friends.  Cindy cooked a turkey and made sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, cranberry jello and both pumpkin and cranberry-apple pies.  Then we all went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.   Good friends, good food and Harry Potter, too.  Can't beat that.

Yesterday we walked down to see the new neighborhood sign.  The original Kensington sign went up in the 1950's and had deteriorated to the point where only some of the letters would light up (no "sin" in Kensington?  Nobody really believed that one.).  Anyway, the new sign is finally up and it looks great.

Rainy Day

Actually a rainy weekend, soft, gentle rain.  The forecast was for one to three inches of rain, wind and hail, but so far we've had about half an inch, very little wind and (thank God) no hail.  The cover crop, shrubs and trees are loving it, but so, of course, are the weeds.

The ones who aren't loving it are the poor, sodden marchers and runners in the Susan G. Komen Three Day event.  Their website mentions San Diego's normally blue skies, gentle Mediterranean climate and 70 miles of beautiful beaches, but none of those are much in evidence for them today.  We've had a lot of friends who have fought breast cancer, so we wish them well.

Can't Beat Those Beets

Well, actually, we didn't care much for the Chioggia beets we had the other night; they were way too sweet.  They're sometimes called "Candystripe" for their concentric pinkish and white rings, but the "candy" part is also appropriate for the sweet taste of these beets.  It wasn't a bad tasting beet, but it just wasn't what I expected a beet to taste like.

Beet Greens

Cindy would be fine with just the beet greens from the Chioggias, but she likes Detroit Reds better, so I think she'll be planting some more of them soon and skip the Chioggias.

She made some beet gnocchi a couple of months ago that was as pretty as it was tasty, so I suspect we'll be having more of that some day.

One Tough Survivor

When our friend Joanne was visiting last month, a Western Fence Lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis) approached her, stared directly at her, and appeared to be encouraging her in a difficult decision she was making.  It probably was doing no such thing, but the fact that the lizard had survived the loss of its tail and still appeared to be thriving did give her encouragement.

Joanne's Lizard

When I saw the lizard last week, I was surprised to see he had lost a foot, too, but he was still active and thriving, soaking up a few rays on our garden wall.

We had heard that these lizards could shed their tails in order to escape from predators, although according to the San Diego Natural History Museum, the Western Fence Lizard avoids dangerous predators through "constant vigilance and fast reflexes."  Mad-Eye Moody would be proud of this critter.

Some of our cats love these critters, too.  They spend hours at the front door, watching through the screen as a lizard taunts them through the security door.  Sometimes we have three cats lined up at the door intent on the lizard. We've actually had a couple of lizards in the past who were fool enough to get into the house, but we've always managed to round them up and evict them before the cats found them and did any damage to them. We had been told they could be toxic to pets who tried to eat them, so we've always tried to keep them and the cats apart, although the cats have other opinions about that.

The Lizard Patrol On Alert

These lizards are pretty common in our garden and in the San Diego area. In the summer we usually have four or five in the garden at any given time. Turns out that is probably a good thing:  they may reduce the incidence of Lyme Disease where they live, as the Western Fence Lizard blood will destroy the Lyme disease spirochetes when an infected tick bites the lizard. Western Fence Lizards apparently also eat crickets, which may explain what happened to all the brown crickets that hatched out last week--the cats were also fascinated by the crickets.

Covered-Up Cover Crop

Cindy decided to put a cover crop of beans, vetch and three or four other seeds in both the old and one of the new raised beds this winter that can be tilled under and worked into the soil as "green manure" in the spring.

So we were sitting in the hot tub one morning last weekend and soon saw that the California Towhees thought we had provided them with a grand new buffet.  They would fly up, perch on the edge of the plexiglas panels that are supposed to keep the varmints out of the raised beds, then swoop down, peck up a few seeds, and fly off, only to repeat the process moments later.  They managed to gobble quite a bit of seed while we were watching.  Since they're ground feeders, I guess they just got tired of waiting for the House Finches and Goldfinches to drop seed out of the bird feeders.  I thought it could have been worse; it could have been the whole flock of Mourning Doves.

However, Cindy was not prepared to see her whole cover crop go down the gullets of a gang of marauding Towhees.  She covered the bigger bed with a permeable cloth that will allow sun and rain through and used good old-fashioned clothes pins to clip it to the plexiglass panels.

Original raised bed with plexiglass panels

She made a cover for the new bed by cutting up some PVC piping, installing it upright in the soil in the new bed and then tucking half hoops made of black irrigation piping into the PVC pipes.  

New raised bed with hoops

 Then she covered the hoops with the same cloth, creating a simple little greenhouse for her cover crop.

Covered up crop

This should thwart both the birds and the squirrels, we hope, until the cover crop can mature.  

Meatballs

So, apparently under the influence of the moon, the stars, the record hot weather and two bottles of really excellent wine out on the patio Wednesday night, I apparently volunteered to make dinner Friday night.  Since my repertoire is limited to scrambled eggs and spaghetti, the latter looked like the obvious choice.  It seemed only fair since Cindy does all the cooking and needs a break from it every now and then.

However, my reckless mood of volunteering also allegedly included making meatballs.  I've never made meatballs in my life, but Cindy loves meatballs so I thought I'd give it a try.  The thought of making meatballs was intimidating, but Cindy had a good recipe for a meatball sandwich which turned out to be within my limited capabilities.

1 pound lean ground beef
4 pieces French bread or grinder rolls (whatever those are), each 5 inches long
1 egg, beaten to blend
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt, or less
hot-pepper sauce, as desired (it wasn't, so I didn't--there are some advantages to being the cook)


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, then bake the meatballs for 30 minutes.  

It seemed pretty straightforward.

At Cindy's suggestion, I used panko breadcrumbs instead of the french bread and dried diced onion instead of the chopped onion, adding about a tablespoon of beef stock to the panko crumbs and the dried onion so they could soak up the stock before adding them to the other ingredients.

The parsley was nearly my downfall, though.  I went out and picked some out of the garden, but found that my "knife skills", as they call it on Top Chef, were nearly nonexistent.  It looks so smooth and easy on Top Chef; chopchopchopchopchopchop, and done, all in finely chopped, uniform pieces.   I hacked away at that parsley with the ulu for way too long and I don't think any two pieces were the same size, but at least I eventually had about a tablespoon of the parsley and added it to the other ingredients.

I'd never make it on Top Chef, but the meatballs came out well, as did the spaghetti and the salad Cindy made, and the whole dinner was delicious.  Now she's intimating that it would be nice for me to do this once a month, although it may take a lot more wine for me to get to that point.

Last of The Tomatoes

We ate the last of our Black Krim tomatoes last night.  The weather was cooler than usual most of the summer and we've had rain this fall, so the sugars in the tomatoes just never got as well developed as they could have, but we still had a pretty good crop of the tomatoes despite the best efforts of the squirrels and the raccoons to get them before we did.

Cindy was grilling burgers outside on the grill, using a recipe a friend at Hart Winery had given her last week.  We had mentioned that most of the wine clubs we belong to had sent us port wine, but that we never get around to drinking it because we're just not dessert wine drinkers, so it's been piling up in our wine storage area.  So she suggested we use some of the port the next time we made burgers, adding some blue cheese, some panko crumbs, the port and an egg.  Cindy decided to skip the egg, but the rest of it made delicious burgers, topped with the big juicy tomato from our garden.

It was a beautiful evening.  It's been hot the last couple of days, with temperatures in the low 90's, but this time of year the sun is so low in the sky that we can sit out on the patio in the evening and enjoy the garden without having the sun in our eyes.  We decided to just stay out on the patio and eat the burgers with a bottle of Hart's 2007 Grenach and some Danza Del Sol 2008 Merlot under the stars.

That's a great way to enjoy a garden.

To Bee Or Not To Bee...

You know I couldn't resist that pun.

Cindy went to a class on bees last week.  Since she can't have chickens, she's thinking she might like to have an apiary and keep honey bees.  I told her that, after the Monarch caterpillar fiasco, we'd better make sure first that Scrub Jays don't eat them.  We're still whacking our foreheads and saying "Duh" over that one.

One question that always worried Cindy was whether, by removing the honey from the hive, beekeepers were depriving the bees of food they would need for their own survival.  However, the presenter said that the lowest tray of a hive is where the queen and the baby bees are, the second level is the food for the hive, and if you add additional trays, the bees will continue to make excess honey and fill up the honeycombs.  So that part sounds good.

Another concern we've had is the possibility that Africanized bees could take over the hive.  Africanized bees can take over a hive when the queen become weakened or dies.  They tend to be highly defensive and more easily agitated than regular honey bees, according to the San Diego Natural History Museum.  I'm not sure that's something I want in my backyard.

I think we have more research to do.

More Rain--But No Fires This Year

I woke up to the sound of rain water gurgling off the roof and into the new drainage system yesterday morning.

We got about 15 hundredths of an inch according to the Union Trib, although it seemed like more to me.  That brings us up to over two inches since July 1st.  It's very unusual to have this much rain at this time of year, but it's very welcome; because of the rainfall, we haven't had to worry about wild fire danger this year.

October is usually a very dangerous month for fire in Southern California.  Without rain, the brush is usually so dry at this time of year that it doesn't take much to get a fire started.  When the Santa Ana winds start to blow hot, dry air in from the desert, the wind can push a fire at an incredible pace.  It takes on a life of its own, like the Fiendfyre spell in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

We used to think that we were relatively safe from them because we're surrounded by freeways.  The vast oceans of cement would keep the fires contained, so we thought.  We continued to think that way until the Cedar fire in October 2003, when we saw that fire leap across Interstate 15 and continue to race toward the ocean.  Tumbleweeds on one side of the freeway catch fire and blow across the road to set numerous fires on the other side.  That's when we brought the cat carriers up from the basement and stacked them up in the dining room, preparing to evacuate quickly if we had to do so.

Canyon Fire October 2007

Four years later, just two weeks before the major Witch Creek fire in October 2007, we had or own mini fire in the canyon behind our house.  Cindy had been to a class on wildfire that day and was telling a visiting friend about it, when she smelled smoke.  Fortunately, we discovered it before it got out of hand--there was no wind that day--and the fire department arrived promptly and got it out.

Bravo, San Diego Fire Department!

Anyway, it scared the bejazus out of us.  We've been very careful ever since about trying to keep a defensible fire space around the house, particularly in the back because, although it was across the canyon from us, with a bit of wind it could have gone anywhere in nothing flat.  So we're very happy about the rain this October.

Making Sure It's Out

All Gone

Damn.  I am so bummed out.  Shortly after I published the post yesterday about the remaining Monarch Butterfly caterpillar, I went out to take another look at it and it was gone.  It had stripped off most of the leaves on the stem it was on, so it was pretty much exposed, as was one of them the day before, so we're thinking the birds got them all.

But which bird?  Was it one of the House Finches?  The Bushtits that are flocking in the neighbor's Trumpet Creeper right now?  The shy, reclusive California Thrasher that flits in and out of the hedge to break off chunks of suet?  Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick?

My money's on the Scrub Jay.  Members of the Corvid family, they are highly intelligent and opportunistic birds.  Cindy had just hung a feeder full of peanuts out because we knew there was at least one around, so we're guessing the Jay just thought we were providing yet another tasty snack for it.

While we were watching the Monarch Butterfly flitting around and looking at the caterpillar earlier in the afternoon, Cindy had made the remark that maybe we should take the remaining caterpillar into protective custody, but unfortunately we didn't actually do that.  Lesson learned, too late.

So now we will move the Asclepia to the front yard, where there is less cover for birds.  They tend to hang around the feeders in the back yard, so future butterfly larvae should have a better chance of survival.  And maybe eventually we'll get to see the whole metamorphosis process.

Then There Was One

Yesterday morning we had three large Monarch caterpillars, but by the afternoon there was only one visible.  I looked all over but didn't see the other two; we're hoping the birds didn't pick them off.  They were each about two inches long and as big as my little finger, so we're hoping they crawled up into the boxwood hedge somewhere to form their chrysalises.

The remaining caterpillar is busy munching away at the asclepia leaves.  I was surprised at how active they are--they just keep eating or moving into position to eat more leaves.  Several of the stems are entirely bare of leaves now, but there were enough leaves to make it identifiable as milkweed to another Monarch butterfly today.   I tried to get a picture of the Monarch, but it kept flitting from plant to plant, then back to the asclepia, then over the hedge, then to the tomatoes, then back to the asclepia.

So maybe there will be more caterpillars in the future.

Monarch Butterfly Bush

Cindy planted a Monarch Butterfly Bush (asclepia), a form of milkweed, to attract Monarch butterflies this fall.  Other Master Gardeners have reported fewer Monarchs (Danaus plexippus)  than normal, but we noticed a couple of caterpillars on the stems of the bush the other day.

The caterpillars may consume most of the bush before they form a chrysalis and pupate.  This is normal and the bush will grow back.  The larvae use the food from the bush to feed themselves before they pupate.

Monarch Butterfly Bush Flowers and Seeds

These butterflies are one of the most amazing creatures on the planet. Most generations of Monarchs live only four or five weeks, but in the late fall, a final generation migrates from locations in Canada and the United States to central Mexico, where they hibernate until they awaken in the Spring to mate and begin the northward migration through successive generations back to their northern locations.  The caterpillars we see on our bush now in San Diego in late October will continue the migration and may actually become the hibernation generation.  For more information see Monarchs of Migration.

Monarch Butterfly Larvae

I was just amazed at how beautiful these caterpillars are.  We have three of them industriously chomping away at the bush.  They've grown considerably larger in the three or four days since we first noticed them; they've already eaten most of the leaves off several of the stems and look like they're already about big enough to form the chrysalis.

To be continued (we hope) .....

Water, Water Everywhere

When we installed our new rain harvesting system a month ago, we anticipated that a good rain of about a half inch would fill up all three barrels.  What we didn't anticipate was that we would get about that much rain while we were still on our trip to Oregon.  Rain in San Diego in September is unusual and that much rain that early in the rain year, which starts July 1st, is really outside the normal pattern.

When we got home, we found that all of the barrels were already full of water, and had actually overflowed, digging trenches in the bare earth under the overflow ports.

Cindy used some of the water in the garden after we got home, but when we heard that more rain was expected this week, she got to work to create some drainage for the overflow to channel it into the canyon but away from the edge of the canyon behind our fence, since erosion of the edge of the back yard is our principal concern.

The biggest problem was how to route the overflow from the two big tanks behind the garage out over the fence and over into the canyon, but she solved that problem with some long pieces of piping pushed through the jungle behind the fence.  Someday we'll have to clear out some of that brush, but for now the overflow is routed away from the house and away from the fence.

We've now had almost two inches of rain this rain year and I know she's already regretting not getting bigger tanks, maybe the big mama 620 gallon tank or the REALLY big 2825 gallon tank.  It's probably a good thing our yard isn't any bigger than it is.

Where's Katy?

We've checked the rose bushes every day, looking for the katydid.  She's so well camoflaged that she's very difficult to see against the green leaves; she looks just like a leaf herself, but we haven't seen her since we got back from our trip to Oregon.

We really enjoyed trying to find her before we left.  One day before we left I looked for at least five minutes before I found her, directly in front of my nose about twelve inches away.  Another day I saw her in the morning, then Cindy and I looked again when we went for our walk about noon but we couldn't find her although we looked for about twenty minutes before we gave up.

Katydids apparently don't move around a lot; one may spend its entire life on the same tree or plant.  Ours seemed to move around at night and then be stationary during the daylight hours.  Although she never seemed to move very far from where she had been the previous day, her camouflage was so good that she was still difficult to spot unless she was on top of a leaf.  Even then you had to check every single leaf to be sure because her color was so close to the color of the leaves, the veining on her sides looked like leaf veining and her articulated legs looked like leaf stems.

Now we don't know where to start looking for her or even if she's still there.  Did she move on to another plant or leave altogether?  If she did, did she lay eggs before she left?

Who knows what katydid did, but we enjoyed her while she was here.

Esterlina

While we were in Mendocino, we took the opportunity to visit Esterlina Winery in the Anderson Valley.  We had been there the last time we were in the area and joined their wine club, which had shipped us a bottle of their wonderful 2006 Cole Ranch Merlot just before we left on the trip.

You have to make and appointment and it's a long drive from Highway 128 two miles up a dirt road to Esterlina's tasting room on top of a mountain, but the view from their deck overlooking the Anderson Valley below is more than worth it.

View of the Anderson Valley from Esterlina's Tasting Room 

Cabernet Grapes

And then you get to taste their wines.

We raved about the 06 Merlot so much that the host opened a bottle for everyone to taste although it wasn't on the tasting list.  It was as good as we remembered, but the 05 Alexander Valley Lazy S Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon and the 07 Sonoma Mountain Janian Vineyard Syrah were also great, so we bought some of each and had them ship it to us so we didn't have to worry about the wine getting too hot in the car on the trip home.

There were still cabernet grapes on the vine waiting to be picked.

Anderson Valley Vineyard

Then we went on to Yorkville Cellars tasting room and got another fabulous Anderson Valley view, as well as more wine.

Catnip!

I don't know what it is about cats and catnip, because I don't even get much odor of mint from it, but cats love it.

Cindy pointed out to me that, since we're not letting the cats outside even under supervision, the catnip plants had recovered and are thriving.  I took a few leaves into the house and the reaction of the older cats was immediate:  eyes popped open, heads whipped around, noses twitched.  They gobbled the leaves immediately and started looking around for more.



The two younger kitties have had catnip in their enormous collection of toys, but apparently not much experience with fresh catnip.  They ran away when I tried to give it to them, so the older cats gobbled their shares.  Bailey later changed her mind, so I gave her a leaf and she rolled around on the steps, batting the leaf around and chasing fur balls.

Catnip Junkies

This photo is from a few years ago.  Beep Beep and Hutz had just destroyed an entire catnip plant and were sleeping off the effects in the planter.

Ahhhh, Mendocino

We finally left Southern Oregon after what seemed like at least a month there and headed down the coast through the Redwood National Park to Mendocino.

We stopped in Eureka and had lunch at the Lost Coast Brewery.  Good food, although we refrained from sampling their principal products because we were mindful that we were still driving, but the burger and fish-and-chips were good.

It was a long drive over twisting, steep roads through the redwoods and along the seacoast, but we made it to Alegria Bed & Breakfast Mendocino later that afternoon.  Cindy made a pizza from a Boboli crust, some of our own homegrown tomatoes, fresh Rogue Creamery mozzarella and shaved parmesan cheese, with artichoke pesto from Harry and David, along with a bottle of Yorkville Cellars High Roller Red wine.  Yum.

We love staying at Alegria with our friends Elaine and Eric Hillesland.  The place is just magic, quiet, secluded and incredibly relaxing, and Elaine's breakfasts are great.  I even found some pieces of sea glass on the beach.

This is the view of the beach and Mendocino Cove from our balcony--you can see why we love it there.

Of course we have to mention the great restaurants and food to be had in the town of Mendocino, too.  Sunday night we ate at 955 Ukiah, where Cindy had the pork chop stuffed with ham, chard and provolone, and I had the braised chuck steak baked in pastry, all of it very good.   Monday we had dinner at Moosse Cafe, where Cindy had the Vegetable Pave (should be an accent mark over the "e", but I don't know how to do them) and I had the Chicken Breast Piccata.  The vegetable dish consisted of layers of potato, pepper, squash, eggplant, portabella and thyme-infused tomato.  Cindy had been feeling a bit vegetable-deprived, but this more than made up for any previous deficit.

The Land Where Time Stands Still

"The undiscovered vortex, from whose bourn no traveller returns..."  (apologies to Shakespeare).

I don't know what it is about my home town, but every time I go up to Medford, time seems to move so slowly it almost stops.  After we had been there for four days, Cindy said, "How long have we been here?  A month?"  Every day seems like it's a week long, at least.

Time dragged on this trip because of car trouble.  We had trouble with the Saturn's reverse gear on the way up to Medford, but got that fixed in Sacramento and made it to Medford on schedule Monday night.  Then Tuesday, after visiting my mom, we were cruising down Central Avenue, the main north-south drag in town, when the car suddenly just... stopped... going.  We managed to coast into a vacant parking space on the street, but couldn't get the car started again.  So... another call to AAA, a tow truck and a friendly couple of ex-San Diegans who now live in Medford who gave us a ride to the repair shop.  Sigh.  More visions of expensive repairs.

My brother came and picked us up in the Camry wagon we were trading for the Saturn and we went back to the house to drop him off.  We drove off in the Camry and got about a mile from the house when we started hearing a noise that sounded like metal dragging.  We got out and looked under the car but couldn't see anything hanging down.  So we drove the car to a different repair shop and rented a car.  Three cars and two repair shops in one day--that's a record for us, one we hope never to exceed.

Turned out the Saturn just had a loose fuel hose clamp, but the Camry needed brake work.  At least it all happened in town where we could get things fixed, and not out in the boonies.  But we've now collected more mechanics' business cards than we ever thought we would need.

Still, Southern Oregon does have its compensations.  We bought some Oregon Blue Cheese and Smokey Blue at the Rogue Creamery in Central Point and several of the delicious tortas from Rising Sun Farms in Talent.  I am particularly fond of Rising Sun's Marionberry Cheese Torta, but we bought a couple of others, as well.

We didn't get to go to Crater Lake, but at least we brought some goodies back with us.

Lithia Park

One of my favorite places in the entire world is Lithia Park in Ashland, Oregon, so of course Cindy and I had to take a stroll through the park while we were in Southern Oregon.  We had to postpone it initially because it was a bit too cool for us California weather wimps, so we decided to go raid Bloomsbury Books because, well, we always go there and we always find great books to lug home with us, so, why not go there until the chill was off?  Cindy bought a couple of (what else?) gardening books and I bought Alexander McCall Smith's "44 Scotland Street" and Peter Mayle's "Vintage Caper".

And by then it was warm enough to enjoy the park, so on we went, shooting pictures all the way.

The park was designed by John McLaren, who also designed Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, and it's on the National Register of Historic Places, but that didn't mean much to my sibs and me when we were kids.  We just enjoyed scrambling around on the rocks in Ashland Creek and scampering up and down in the decomposed granite of the steep hillside.  We undoubtedly contributed to the erosion of the hillside, which is probably why there are now fences intended to keep people on the trails, instead.

I was glad to see that kids still enjoy the wading pool below the bridge and the playground, but the park itself is now the main attraction for Cindy and me.  The variety of trees is amazing.  The fabulous Rhododendrons and Azaleas were long past blooming.  A few trees had leaves beginning to turn, but in the early Fall the native Madrones and Manzanitas provide most of the interest with their red, green and tan peeling bark.

The park has always informed my ideas of what a garden should be:  a peaceful place that incorporates natural elements of rocks and native trees and shrubs.  Lithia includes many non-native plants and trees that have been introduced over the years, but to my mind, it's the native plants that really make the park what it is.

I was also glad to see that the effects of the major flood that ripped through the park in 1997 are no longer as evident as they were in the first years immediately after the flood.  The force of the water straightened out the course of Ashland Creek in some places, toppling many big old trees and ripping away part of the trail that goes up along the creek, as well as tearing out a couple of bridges that crossed the creek.

Now the raw scars of the flood are gone.  The bridges and parts of the trail that were taken out have been restored.  It's a peaceful, quiet place for walking or meditating once again.  We saw two people sitting on park benches reading books.  My favorite thing for many years was sitting on a rock in the middle of the creek, letting the creek flow around me, listening to the gentle ripple of the water over the granite rocks.  It's always been a place to restore calmness in the middle of the chaos of everyday life.  I was happy to feel its calming effect again.




And then, as we were leaving, Cindy noticed the moon between the trees.  Wonderful.

No Going Back(ward)

Cindy and I set out on the Great Road Trip of 2010 about ten days ago to drive the elderly Saturn up to Oregon and exchange it for my mom's slightly less elderly (fifteen years vs. eighteen years) Camry station wagon.  We need a functional car in Oregon to drive Mom to the doctor and various other appointments, but the Camry was more car than she needed, especially since she voluntarily quit driving (THANK YOU!!!!) about four years ago.

My problem was that I had my doubts as to whether the Saturn would make it over the Grapevine, up the Central Valley and over the Siskiyous to Oregon, so we had all the necessary repairs made by our mechanics, who know us all too well.  On Sunday morning we loaded the car, backed it out of our long driveway and drove six blocks to the grocery store for coffee to start the trip.  But when we tried to back out of the parking place, we couldn't get the car in reverse gear.  I tried it, Cindy tried it, and .... nothing.  No reverse.

However, once we had pushed it out of the parking space, the forward gears seemed to be working O.K.  Had it not been Sunday morning and our favorite repair shop closed, we probably would have just driven over there and had them fix it.  But since they were not open, that would have meant delaying the trip.  So we just decided to go... forward.  That presented some challenges along the way; we had to park in a parking garage in Burbank when we stopped for lunch, but we found a space where we could pull through without having to back up.  At the hotel in Roseville, California, Sunday night we discovered that the parking lot had several spaces that sloped up, so we could just put the manual transmission in neutral and let it coast down to where we could put it into first gear.

After consulting most of the males in the family by telephone, all of whom said some variation of "Hmmm, sounds like a linkage problem," we called Triple A, got a referral to a repair shop a few blocks away, and chugged off with nightmare visions of a long delay for expensive repairs.  But after half an hour and $25, the drooping cable from the battery cut-off had been secured up out of the way of the, yes, the linkage and we again had a full compliment of gears.

Unfortunately, that incident left us so shaken that we decided not to take the side trip we had planned on to check out Peaceful Valley organic garden supply in Grass Valley.  They specialize in California native plants and supplies for organic gardening, and Cindy had really been looking forward to visiting their store.   She was hoping to get some seed potatoes and we would probably have gone north with a trunk full of vegetation, but we decided not to take a chance on the car having further problems.

So we'll have to go there on some future trip.  

Pears, Walnuts, Pasta

Included in a shipment of wine from Valley View Winery in Jacksonville, Oregon the other day were a couple of Bosc pears from Naumes Fruit Gifts in Medford, Oregon.

We weren't expecting the pears, but Cindy used them in an amazing pasta dish tonight.  She chopped up the pears, made a sauce from an Amish chicken soup base we had lugged home from Indiana, Oregon Smokey Blue cheese from the Rogue Creamery , tarragon and basil from our garden, candied walnuts, and a dash of lime (since our lemon tree turned out to be a lime....) and added it to the pasta.  It was an interesting blend of flavors, with the Bosc pear, tarragon and the Smokey Blue working together without any one flavor dominating.

We had it with some bruschetta topped with olive oil, garlic, our tomatoes and mozzarella, and it was all yummy.

Rain Harvesting System

Our new rain harvesting system was installed yesterday by Ace Rain Systems, Inc..  The system consists of two 205 gallon Bushman water storage tanks behind the garage, a 130 gallon Bushman tank on the back patio and a system of new gutters and underground pipes to channel water off the roof of the house and the garage into the tanks.



The system also includes First Flush Water Diverters to capture the first water to reach the tanks, because this is usually the most contaminated water.  Each of the tanks also has fine mesh screening material over the entry ports to keep mosquitoes and crud out of the tank.  Since we have flat roofs on both the house and the garage, a lot of the white granular material from the roofs always gets washed off in each rain and would eventually clog the tanks.

This picture shows the green 130 gallon tank with the white First Flush diverter running down the post beside it.  A valve at the bottom can be opened to drain the contaminated water and other debris out of the diverter.  There is also a faucet visible about half way down that can be used to drain the tank.

In addition to the tanks, we had a system of new gutters installed to capture water coming off the patio cover and the three short roof sections along the back of the house.  Fortunately, we had some paint left over from painting the house, so they painted the guttering so that it fits right in with the rest of the house trim.

We're very pleased with the appearance of the system.  There is extra piping visible in a couple of places and the big green tank on the patio (Go Ducks!) may take some getting used to, but the big tanks are out of sight behind the garage and most of the piping is underground.

The overflow from the 130 gallon tank beside the patio goes into a system of PVC pipes running along the edge of the patio and the wall beside the garage, around behind the garage, and into the big tanks out behind the garage.  The pipes and all the black weed block will all eventually be covered with decomposed granite (DG) and create a unified look throughout the back yard.

The two tanks behind the garage get water from the garage roof through the upper gutter and pipe and from the house guttering system through a pipe that comes along the base of the wall behind the garage and up into the tanks.  The tanks are connected by a pipe between them.  If we get a rainfall that fills the tanks, the excess water will be directed out toward the canyon, but away from the eroded edge, since part of the reason for installing this system is to slow the erosion process.  Eventually we hope to have a small orchard out behind the fence that will absorb any excess water.  

Cindy built the pads for both sets of tanks from cinder block resting on gravel and pavers (see earlier "Building Materials" post), and then we had Don Wilson, the mason who installed the stone facing on the patio and garage walls, install similar stone on both the pads.  Good thing we ordered too much stone the first time, the leftovers came in very handy.  Wilson Masonry

This system will give us over 500 gallons of water storage capacity, which translates to about the amount of water that comes off our roof during a half inch rainfall.  For an environment that gets an average of ten inches of rain a year, with increasing demand for water and decreased supply, the ability to capture, store and use rainfall is becoming more important.  We can also capture and use the water we use to wash off the solar panels on the roof when we do that.

Now all we need is some rain!