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!

... Of The Mighty Oregon!

"Oregon, our alma mater,
Umble bumble umble bum,
Umble bumble umble
Umble bumble  OREGON*.

Umble bumble umble bumble
Umble bumble OREGON.
Umble bumble umble bumble
Of the Mighty OREGON!

GO DUCKS GO!
FIGHT DUCKS FIGHT!
GO!  FIGHT!
WIN DUCKS WIN!"

O.K., so I didn't learn all the words to the U of O fight song in college.  In fact, I understand there's some controversy as to exactly what the words are.  When I went to school in the late sixties, "school spirit" wasn't exactly big on the agenda, given that the Ducks were usually fighting with the Beavers to avoid the cellar of the Pac-10 (then the Pac-8).  It got a little better when I was in law school, because Dan Fouts was the quarterback, throwing passes to Bobby Moore (who later became Ahmad Rashad) and the team had some success at last, although track was still the main focus, with Steve Prefontaine smashing world records on a regular basis.

You may ask, "What does this have to do with your garden?"  Indeed, you may ask.

When the new rain barrels were brought in for installation today, the smaller tank (130 gallons) became a big green monolith just outside the back door.  I told Cindy I expected to see a chimpanzee tossing a bone over it.

We started talking about how to decorate around it:  lattice?  vines?  pots of flowers?  She promptly vetoed my suggestion of some tasteful yellow trim and a honkin' big Fighting Ducks decal, but with the oval opening in the center, it does look kinda like a great big green Oregon symbol.

Pix of the whole system tomorrow!

* It's pronounced ORYgun, not Oreh-gone, as most Eastern sportscasters pronounce it.  If you say "Oreh-gone", you will get The Look and somebody will say, "You're not from around here, are you?"

Cock-A-Doodle

I just finished reading a blog post about a population explosion of ducks in Phoenix that started with a couple of ducklings that a family had given their children at Easter and then dumped at the neighborhood pond when they grew too big.  Now there are wild ducks mixed among them and duck poop everywhere.
http://lifewithbeck.blogspot.com/2010/09/daffy-update.html.

That reminded me of the rooster that hung out in our shrubbery about ten years ago.  He was very handsome but very wary of us.  We started calling him Cock-A-Doodle.  We heard from the next door neighbor that a family a couple of blocks over had given their children chicks at Easter and either allowed Cock-A-Doodle to escape or dumped him when they moved.

He seemed to be pretty savvy and managed to survive in the canyon for about a year.  We worried about him because we occasionally have coyotes that sweep through the canyon and eat anything they can catch, including neighborhood cats, ground squirrels and other small critters, but Cock-A-Doodle was able to avoid them successfully.  He lived on seed from the next-door neighbor's bird feeder and we put out seed for him, too.  Every now and then he would strut through our back yard, scratching and eating insects.

Although he was very beautiful, he was, after all, a rooster.  That meant he started crowing when it started getting light, although he often didn't wait until the sun came up but started crowing when the lights from the traffic on the freeway at the bottom of the canyon started picking up, sometimes as early as 2 a.m.  And roosters have no snooze button.

One day we found the neighbors had had enough of the crowing and had asked a man to trap Cock-A-Doodle.  The man had hens but he wanted a rooster, too.  He brought a cage with a hen in it to trap Cock-A-Doodle, but the cage was evidently too small and they couldn't get him in the trap with the hen, so they gave it up for the day.  For the rest of that day Cock-A-Doodle strutted around the yard, crowing at the top of his lungs every few minutes.  We could imagine he was crowing, "There was a HEN here!  And I almost got together with her!"

The neighbors hadn't said anything to us ahead of time about trapping him and when we found out, they told us they were going to withhold bird seed so that he would be hungry when they tried again the next day.  We were determined that if he went into the trap, it wouldn't be for hunger, but because he wanted the companionship of the hens, so we put out seed and water for him as usual.

The next day when we got home, the neighbors told us that the guy brought a bigger trap, again with a hen in it, and that he had barely unloaded it from the truck and opened the trap door before Cock-A-Doodle raced in the door to be with the hen.  So that was O.K. with us--he went because he wanted to be with the hens, not because he was hungry.

We miss catching glimpses of him in the shrubbery, but we're hoping he lived a long and happy life with his harem of hens.

The Summer That Wasn't

We've had one of the coolest summers on record in San Diego this year.  We had about one week of temperatures in the low 90's and upper 80's and not much else.  The marine layer has been dominant most of the summer, so we've had clouds most mornings and even had some San Francisco style fog yesterday morning.

The tomatoes have struggled all summer.  They've done their best and they still taste better than the ones you can buy in the stores, but the sugars haven't developed as well as they could have with a little more heat.

The cool weather has meant that we can get more things done in the mornings than we could if the weather was it in the high 90's.  This morning we moved the square-foot garden boxes with the carrots out of the space where one of the new rain barrels will be.  Then Cindy used the reciprocating saw to cut down one of the boxwood hedge plants to give us better access to that barrel.  Then we went to Home Depot to buy more 6 x 8 x 15 cinder blocks to build the pad for that barrel to sit on.  Last week Cindy built the pad for the two barrels that will go out behind the garage.  The barrels will be installed next week.

When we came up to the cashier at HD (the same one we've checked out with about five times this week), she started laughing and said, "Aren't you done with your project YET?"

Well, no, not yet, but someday.... maybe....  we hope....

Harvest Time

Fall is traditionally time to bring in the harvest, and that's what we've been doing.  Cindy brought in another monster Clarimore zucchini the other day.  This one weighed in at four pounds, two and a half ounces.  If they get any bigger, we'll have to use the pet scale to weigh them instead of the kitchen scale.  She plans to roast and freeze about half of it, then shred and freeze the rest for making more of the yummy zucchini cream pies.  I'm all in favor of that.

Yesterday she brought in a basket of tomatoes, limes and green and violet beans.  I don't know how we're going to eat all of it, but it's all delicious.  The violet beans turn green when cooked, and they taste just the same as the green ones.

Our tomatoes aren't quite as sweet as they usually are because this summer has been so cool.  This year's tomatoes are the Carbons, Stupice, Better Boy, Early Girl and one that's supposed to be Fiorintino, although Cindy thinks the plant might not really be a Fiorintino because those are usually pleated and these aren't.  One description of Costoluto Fiorentino says it is "heavily ribbed," while another says "slight ribbing."  So who knows?

The Carbons have tended to crack and we don't know whether that's due to the cool weather or if they're just prone to cracking normally.  However, a home-grown tomato still beats anything you can buy in the store any day.  The squirrel agrees with that opinion and seems to prefer the Carbons, the Better Boys and the alleged Fiorentinos.  Just what we needed:  a gourmet varmint.

Thoity Poiple Boids...

Mom used to say this little ditty, apropos of nothing in particular:
     "Thoity poiple boids, sitting on the coib
     A'choipin and a'boipin
     And eatin' doity woims"

Translation:  "thirty purple birds, sitting on the curb, chirping and burping and eating dirty worms."

I thought of this ditty this morning when we looked out and saw over twenty Mourning Doves sitting on the power lines, waiting to descend on our seed feeder.  There are so many of them that they drive the smaller birds out.  We recently switched to a seed mix that includes more safflower seed in the hope that they wouldn't gobble so much of it, but that doesn't seem to be working; there are more of them than ever, although they may be flocking right now.  Or maybe they just told all their friends and relatives what a great buffet our feeder is.  Maybe they just used "twitter".

We tried taking the tray off the bottom of the finch feeder for this reason, and the Goldfinches have come back in force since we did that, so we may do the same with the seed feeder.  Some of the Mourning Doves sit on nearby branches and stare at the finch feeder, evidently trying to figure out how to get back at that great nyjer thistle seed they used to enjoy.  One dove even stretched out so far trying to get to it that I thought he was going to fall right off the branch.  He didn't fall, but he couldn't reach the feeder, either.  The doves are really ground feeders, so I think we can count on them to clean up any seed that falls on the ground before the squirrel gets it.

Another bird that will enjoy having seed on the ground will be the California Thrasher that seems to hang out in our shrubbery. It darts out of the hedge, eats a few seeds and is off again.  Sometimes it will venture up onto the suet feeder and eat some of the suet.  We've seen an amazing variety of birds since we put the feeders up last winter.  We had no idea there were so many Goldfinches in the area; we rarely saw them before we put up the finch feeder, and now they're here all the time.

The birds are also now using the birdbath we put in over a year ago.  We called it the "bird repelling fountain" for most of the first year after we installed it, because birds seemed to avoid it, even though water sources for birds are scarce in this environment.  It had its own solar panel to create a little fountain in the center, at least when the sun is shining.  We thought the sound and motion of the water would attract birds, but it initially seemed to have the opposite effect.  We tried changing the flow from fountain to trickle, but nothing worked.  We finally took the solar panel out last winter because it wasn't getting any sun anyway, and replaced it with a large, rough textured rock.  Once we put the feeders in, though, there was no more hesitation--the birds use it constantly now.

Building Materials

We bought a lot of cinder block today and, thanks to our friend Judy and her truck, managed to get it all home and moved into the driveway.

Our current project involves building a raised pad behind the garage for the new rain barrels we're going to install in about ten days.  One of the consequences of low annual rainfall is that, when it does rain, it tends to pour over the edge of the canyon and erode it away, but there's so little of our yard that we can't afford to let it erode any more than it already has.  Hence the new guttering and the rain collection barrels.

However, before the barrels can be installed, we have to build a pad to raise them to the correct height and ensure that they're level.  A couple of weeks ago we built a box out of 2 x 6s.  Cindy then dug out the rock-hard ground, installed the box and filled it with gravel.

The next step is to lay some flat blocks on top of the gravel and then build the cinder block pad on top of that.  Then we're planning to have the front and sides of the pad faced with the same stone veneer we recently had installed on the cinder block planter boxes around the garage and along the back of the house.  It's going to be a big project, but it is under way and should be completed by the end of the month, we hope.

Then we can start thinking about our next insane project.

Violet Beans, Green Beans and French Beans

Cindy planted some pole beans this year, including some heirloom Violet beans, which really are a striking violet color on the vine, but turn green when cooked.  She also planted some regular green beans.  The vines have become so heavy that they are sinking down the poles.  That makes the foliage so thick that the beans are difficult to see, even the violet ones.

As a result, some of the beans hid out in the cover until they were long and pretty tough.  She picked some of them yesterday, but thought they were too tough to use.  She tried cutting through the hull, thought the knife was too dull, tried another knife, couldn't cut it with that one and tried the kitchen scissors.  At that point she was about ready to throw them away, but she decided to try cutting them as French beans instead, slicing through the hulls lengthwise.  Fortunately, that worked and the beans became very soft and tender in the chicken, wild rice and green bean casserole she made for dinner.

That started us thinking that Europeans, with limited land available, probably traditionally grew pole beans rather than bush beans, and probably therefore encountered the same problem of tough hulls and developed the practice of cutting them in the French style.  It's a lot of work to cut them that way, but it worked beautifully.

The vines may be wilting a bit, there are still blossoms forming, so apparently there will be more green and violet beans coming this year.

Relentless March Of The Thunbergia

A couple of years ago, we cut down the monster Eugenia hedge between our house and the neighbors.  That left a bare chain-link fence that wasn't much fun to look at, so Cindy decided to plant some Thunbergia, also known as Black-eyed Susan Vine, to hide the fence.  It certainly did that, and in fact, it looks rather pretty.   However, the Thunbergia liked the location so much that now it seems hell-bent on world domination.

Cindy trimmed it back before we left for the mid-West in July, because the walkway was starting to disappear under Thunbergia vine.  We were gone just over two weeks, and when we got home, the Thunbergia was sending out shoots crawling across the sidewalk toward the house again.  She trimmed it again, and now it's back.

Maybe some day it will meet the zucchini vine, which also seems to have world conquest on its mind.

I Fought The Lawn....

We sold the lawnmower yesterday.  We had replaced the gas lawnmower with a cordless electric mower three years ago, but then we decided to get rid of the last of the grass in the back yard and it didn't make sense to keep the mower.

I had a beautiful lawn in the front yard of the house I lived in in Northern California.  I watered it, I fertilized it and I mowed it.  And mowed and mowed and mowed.  In the fall, I raked leaves from late August through December.  It was a lot of work, but the climate was appropriate for Fescue grasses, and it usually looked great.  I eventually replaced part of it next to the driveway with a dry river bed of drought-tolerant plants, including salvias,  rock roses and lavenders because it was difficult to water that area and I wanted to reduce water usage.  The back yard had very little grass when I moved in and I certainly didn't want to increase the amount of water and mowing, so it was mostly weeds and ground cover, although I did put in a brick walkway and a rock garden.

In San Diego, the climate is definitely not right for Fescue grasses; there just isn't enough rain throughout the year to sustain them.  The grass here is mostly Bermuda, which I think would survive a nuclear blast; as soon as it got a little water, it would be back.  No matter how you try to kill it, the Bermuda is still lurking there somewhere.  We hope the weed block we've put down in the back yard will finally kill it off, but that remains to be seen.

Some of our neighbors still try to have Fescue lawns in spite of water restrictions.  There's no denying that they look good and feel great underfoot, but with a climate that gets an average of ten inches of rain a year, they require lots of additional water and fertilizer.  Some people have resorted to artificial grass to keep the green look.  The artificial lawns don't require water, don't need to be mowed and look pretty good.  We heard from one of our neighbors that somebody had vandalized her artificial lawn recently by smearing latex paint all over it.  Fortunately, they found it before it was completely dry and managed to get it off.  We still don't know if it was somebody who hates plastic grass or just some drunken fool with more excess paint than brains.

We've noticed on our walks around the neighborhood that many of our neighbors are getting rid of their lawns and going with drought tolerant plants.  We've seen a lot of cacti, which are very beautiful right now--if you like cacti.  I can't say that I do, but I am glad to see yards that require less water and little or no fertilizer to make an interesting landscape.

So we're glad to see the lawnmower go to somebody who can use it; and really glad that we don't need it anymore.

First Carrots

Cindy harvested the first carrots today and we had them for lunch.  They were about three or four inches long, crunchy but tender.  They tasted and smelled just like ... carrots.  We love having veggies right out of the garden.

She's also planted more lettuces and we'll also have more beets in about two months.

Mystery Bug Identified!

Last week we found a very interesting green bug on one of the rose bushes in the front yard.  It was so well camouflaged that we almost didn't see it.  It was about an inch long, with articulated legs like a grasshopper, but very short wings and the body was much more oval than that of a grasshopper.

We kept checking on it every night.  It moved around some during the night, but never far from where it had been the previous night.  It also didn't seem to be wrecking the devastation on the rose leaves that regular grasshoppers do, so we decided it was probably harmless and might very well be a beneficial bug.

Then we forgot about it and didn't check on it for one night.  When I looked for it yesterday evening, it took me at least five minutes to find it, but again it hadn't moved far from where it was the previous time we had seen it.  When I finally did find it among the rose leaves, I was surprised to see that it had grown considerably and that the body was now about two and a half inches long and less oval.  Its very delicate, hair-like antennae, which before had seemed fairly short, now looked longer than its body.  Its wings were no longer short but were now almost the same length as its body.

So we did some more research and discovered that it's a katydid!  We hadn't heard any katydids singing, so hadn't thought of that identification, but that's what it is.  They are nocturnal, munch on some plant material and will eat the occasional aphid, so it's welcome to all of those it can eat.

When we were back in the midwest in July, we heard katydids and cicadas almost every night.  There's nothing that sounds more like summer than those insect sounds.  We were also surprised and delighted to see fireflies again.  It's been years since either of us had seen a firefly and we both jumped up and yelled "Lightning bug!!!"  So we had to sit out on the patio every night and watch for fireflies.  What a delight they are.

A Day Off

We took a day off yesterday to go up to Temecula to pick up some wine and meet a friend for lunch.

We went to Wilson Creek Winery first to pick up this month's wine club offering.  Of course we had to taste some of the wines first.  Cindy always asks the bartenders what new things we should try, so we started off with their 2009 Spring White, a nice little wine, great for summer.  Then I moved on to the 2009 Riesling and almost spit it out; it was too sweet even for me.  I generally like sweet white wines and I usually love Rieslings, but this one was over the top on sweetness.  We decided to test the 2006 and the 2007 Mouvedres against each other, but both bartenders said they preferred the 2006 and we could see why when we tried it, so we decided to skip the 07.  Cindy moved on to the 2006 Cab, while I tried the 2007 Estate Syrah.  Wow!  We had had this wine in a previous shipment, but had forgotten what a rich, smooth wine it was.  So we got a couple of bottles of the Syrah.

After lunch we stopped at Hart Winery and came away with a 2006 Driveway Red, a 2007 Three and a 2007 Sangiovese.  We love going to Hart--it's one of the last wineries that hasn't been Napafied.  You can stand in the cool, dark tasting room and talk wine to your heart's content, but mind you don't trip over the dog.