"By The Light Of The Silvery Moon..."

Citrus Blossoms

It's been getting cool at night here and last night there were frost warnings for San Diego County, so Cindy decided that we needed to go out after dinner and cover some of the plants.

Her chief concern was for the small citrus trees.  We're still not sure exactly what they are (see Of Lemons and Limes and When Life Hands You Lemons...), but they've been blooming their little hearts out lately, and we'd hate to see all those blossoms ruined by frost.

So after dinner we trooped outside, armed with flashlights and a light fabric material to cover the plants.

They looked a bit ghostly in the moonlight when the plants were all wrapped up, but at least they should be protected from frost.

Maybe someday they'll actually produce enough fruit for us to figure out what kind of citrus plants they are.

Butternut Squash

Butternut Squash

We finally had some of the Butternut Squash for dinner last Sunday, and it was excellent.

Cindy planted these in the raised bed behind the garage and constructed panels to keep the varmints from gnawing on them.  (See "Shock, Horror!)

Then she encased them in some old pantyhose to keep the birds from pecking into them.

Cindy finally picked these about a month ago, and they've been maturing since then, so we finally ate some of it.

Roasted, buttered, yum.

Tomatoes Gone Wild!

Tomato Plants

Our tomato plants are showing no signs of slowing down this fall.  The vines are still green and bushy.

They have plenty of blossoms, and there are still a few tomatoes on the vines, but I think it's now too chilly for any more tomatoes to set on.   The plants don't seem to know that, though; they're looking bigger and healthier than they were this summer.

Still A Few Tomatoes

Cindy is thinking of taking a few cuttings from the plants and seeing if she can root them, and then she'd have plants ready to set out again in January or February.

Even the tomato plant in the potato bag is still going strong.   That plant was supposed to be a determinate variety, which dies back once it has produced tomatoes, but this one doesn't seem to know that.  This is the same plant that produced the luscious tomatoes the varmint got last August (see "Why We Have The Varmint Repelling Panels").

Caution, Gardener At Work

So, once these last few tomatoes ripen and are gone, we'll have to wait until it's warm enough for more to set on and ripen.  We wait for months for that to happen, then suddenly we're up to our knees in tomatoes, and then one day they're finally gone and we have to wait again.

Return Of The Katydid

After several weekends of cool, rainy weather that's about as close to Fall weather as San Diego ever gets, we had a warm, sunny day yesterday and decided to sit out on the front porch in the late afternoon.

While we were sitting there, we heard a persistent clicking sound coming from the rose bushes.  We wondered if it might be the sound a katydid makes, so we went over to see if we could find one.

From our last experience with a Katydid, we knew they're so well camouflaged that they're hard to spot; they look so much like rose leaves that's probably why they seem to prefer those plants.

As we were checking it out, Cindy zeroed in on a rose bud that was covered with thrips.  She suddenly jumped backward and said, "Oh, there it is!"  The katydid was just inches from her nose, but she hadn't noticed it at first since she was focused on the thrips.

We were able to get a pretty good view of this katydid since it was perched up on top of the leaves.  We invited him to eat as many of the thrips as he wanted, but he soon flew off and landed on the palm tree.

I'm always amazed when I see one how much these insects look like leaves; both the shape and the coloring are perfect.  The only way we usually find them is by noticing that leaves don't have legs and antennas.

Or by finding one inches from our noses.

Pretty In Purple

Cindy asked me to take a picture of this salvia.

It's next to the birdbath and suffered through the whole back yard restoration project last year.  We thought the plant was a goner for a while, but it has bounced back and is looking good now.

We love the brilliant purplish blue of the flowers.  They fit in well with the lavenders and the decomposed granite around the birdbath.

We're glad it's back.

"Gardener's Guilt"

We had a very rainy day Saturday.  A rain system just settled in over San Diego and rained the whole day.  That meant that Cindy couldn't go out and work in the garden, so she felt she didn't have to feel guilty because she wasn't outside weeding or planting or whatever the garden needs at the moment.

With our growing season being as long as it is, there's not too much down-time for gardeners; there's always something that needs to be done and it's hard to keep up with it.  So it's nice to have an occasional quiet, rainy day indoors.

We appreciate the water, too, we can always use that.

Graber Olive Company

Filling The Cans

Cindy and I decided to take a day trip up to Ontario California last Saturday to tour the Graber Olive Company and watch them pack their olives.  

Graber olives are justly famous for being big, juicy and delicious.  The company was started in 1894 and is still owned by the same family, which prides itself on using only tree-ripened olives.  I've always liked black olives, but I never knew that those "ripe" olives are picked green and then oxidized to give them the black color.  The Grabers pick olives after they have turned red, so many of their olives still have a reddish tinge to them.
 

Packer

That Saturday was the first canning day of the season.  I would have liked to have been able to watch them grade the olives for size, but that process had already been done and they had soaked in brine in big vats, so now they were ready for the canning process.    Stacks of empty cans were loaded into the conveyer mechanism which moved them down to the filling wheel, where they were carried around and the ladies rapidly loaded each can.  Sometimes the mechanism would get stuck and the lady sitting next to it would give it a whack to get the cans moving again.  

Then the cans were routed into the packer where the lids were clamped on; I was fascinated by the steam billowing up from the machinery during this process.  Most of the equipment dates from the 1930s, but it still does the job.  

Then the cans are stacked up into racks and loaded into the boiler where they will be heated for about an hour.  

Loading the Boiler

Is This A Cool Piece of Machinery, or What?

Later the racks of cans are stacked out in the breezeway to cool.

Cooling Cans

It's hard to believe that this whole process takes place in a residential neighborhood; if you don't know it's there, you could easily drive right past and miss it altogether.

I'm glad we went, it's a fascinating process to watch.  Plus we bought several cans of olives.  Yum.

Measure Once, Cut Twice

We love rainy days in San Diego, probably because we have so few of them, so we were thrilled when we heard that rain was predicted for today.

Then we realized that all those projects we've been putting off all summer needed to be done before the rain started.  So we kicked it into gear yesterday and spent most of the day on those projects.

I trimmed the neighbor's shrubbery that hangs over our driveway and cleaned up the pile of leaves and twigs that have built up along the driveway wall.  We hold off on doing this project until after we're sure that the various bird species have stopped nesting; we've seen some Mockingbirds in the neighbor's Strawberry Tree (Arbutus unedo), but we don't think they're nesting, we think they're after the berries, and they're welcome to them.  Those berries are messy and if you step on one, you can track the mess all over the house before you realize it.  Ugh.

Cindy tackled a more difficult project:  correcting the PVC pipework that runs from the house gutters to the first of our Bushman water tanks.  The tank was designed to have a cover on the top that could be opened to allow you to clean out the debris screen.  That cover never fitted properly, couldn't be opened and warped to the point where it had to be replaced.  After talking to the Bushman company, Cindy realized that the guys who had installed the tank had mis-measured the 4 inch pipe that led to it and cut it about two inches too short.  Since they had already glued the pipe into both the connector to the gutters and to the 90 degree elbow, they had then tried to "make it work" by cutting a bigger hole in the cover and trying to rearrange the screw holes to get it lined up with the pipe.

Unfortunately, it didn't work.  So Cindy had to cut the pipe and fiddle with re-engineering a new connector that would make it work.  She got it done, now we can open the cover and so far it's working.

Lesson to be learned:  Measure TWICE, cut once, AND THEN DRY FIT IT before you glue it all together.

"Don't Kill The Bees!"

A Few Bees....

Last Monday we started noticing a few honey bees crawling in and out of the small hole in the city's water meter box in the parkway strip between the sidewalk and the street in our front yard.

There were enough of them flying around for us to conclude that a swarm was forming a hive in the box.

We knew the city would just kill them if the water meter reader reported the hive in the box; they have to look out for the safety of their workers.  But we felt that since we've planted flowers and shrubs to attract pollinators, we should try to keep the bees alive.  Cindy would like to have a hive, but we couldn't just move this hive to the back yard because they have to be moved at least five miles or they will go back to the original hive location.

So Cindy called a fellow Master Gardener who keeps bees.  She agreed to come out and move them to one of her hives, so we put up a sign to warn neighbors to leave them alone.  So now we're codependent to bees, as well as caterpillars, I guess.

We were fascinated by the whole process of removing the bees and, judging by the number of neighbors who drove past to watch with their jaws dropping, so was the whole neighborhood.  We're hoping that if the neighbors find a swarm on their property, they'll call the San Diego Beekeeping Society and get a beekeeper to remove the swarm, rather than just calling an exterminator to kill the bees.

After donning her protective suit and hood, the beekeeper gently brushed the bees and decorative bark off the water meter cover, then lifted it off.

We were stunned to see how many bees there were inside the box--there were hundreds of them, a great, crawling black mass of them attached to the honeycombs they had started to form on the underside of the lid of the water meter box.  We had no idea there were so many in there.

The beekeeper carefully detached the honeycombs crawling with bees and lifted them into a bucket appropriately titled "Scoop Away".  The beekeeper told us that the white color of the honeycomb showed that it was still a very new hive.

Once she had the queen and the honeycombs in the bucket, the beekeeper backed off to let the remaining bees settle down a bit.  Fortunately, these were not Africanized bees, they were just nice gentle honey bees.  Otherwise I would have had to retreat to the house and take pictures from inside, but they didn't bother me at all.

Then it was a matter of collecting as many of the rest of the bees as possible.  The beekeeper explained to us that some of the bees that were left behind, including those that were still out foraging, would simply die, but that most of those were in the last week of their six to eight week life cycle anyway.

They Know The Queen Is In There

That was sad to hear (see "codependent" above), but we were glad to know the hive would be going to a good home.

Finally the beekeeper put the cover back on the water meter box, covered the box with a black plastic trash bag and put bark over the bag to keep foraging bees from trying to get back into the box.

Clean Up

A final spray with some soapy water to change the scent of the area and take care of the few remaining bees, and the hive was on its way to its new home.

How We Almost Lost Ansel

Ansel in 2007

We had the furnace ducts cleaned Monday, which meant a lot of noise and upheaval in the house.  Herding our five cats during the process was pretty complicated as we tried to keep them from getting into the open furnace vents.  Ansel was shut in the front bedroom during the process and didn't like it very much.  He hates being trapped.

We adopted him in 2007--he had appeared in our yard about eighteen months before, hiding in the shrubbery and eating food we put out for him.  He was ragged and unkempt and very, very shy--he would bolt if anyone got too near him.  We thought he was feral.

We named him Ansel after our favorite black-and-white photographer.

Ansel At Home

We didn't see him for several months and we thought the coyotes in the canyon had gotten him.  Then on Labor Day 2007, he turned up again, skinnier than ever and with a big wound on his forehead over his right eye.  We had been talking about trapping him, and with help from our friend Val, we decided to do it.  We put a plate of food in the Tomahawk cat trap and set it, but Ansel had trouble figuring out how to get at the food, so we had to push it closer to the door; once he figured out where the door was and began to follow the food, we pushed it back toward the back of the trap so we could get the door closed.  He wasn't happy about being trapped, but we took the opportunity to get the wound cleaned out and get him "fixed", too.

Because of the wound we had to keep him in a cage in the house for several days.  When we opened the cage to clean it out, he strolled out, came over to me, jumped up on my lap, and settled in.  Not feral after all.

But he evidently still remembers those days of being trapped.  Monday, after the duct cleaner left with his huge, noisy vacuum, Ansel bolted out the back door, hopped over the driveway wall, and disappeared into the thick shrubbery before I could catch him.  Just a little further and he would have been down into the canyon.

Fortunately, Cindy remembered Ansel's weakness for kitty treats and grabbed the can of treats before she went out; when she shook the treats can, he hesitated long enough for her to grab him.

If we hadn't put in all that work cutting back the shrubbery behind the fence last year, she wouldn't have been able to get close enough to get him.   So that was a garden project that has paid a huge dividend.  Anyway, we're glad he's back home--and he's been cashing in on kitty treats ever since.

Is This Harry Potter's Pumpkin Juice?

We had some pumpkin juice left over after Cindy made the soup the other day.  Since I'm a huge fan of Harry Potter, who is always drinking a (presumably non-alcoholic) pumpkin juice beverage, we decided to see what it tasted like.

Answer:  it tastes like.... pumpkin.  What a surprise.

It was interesting to taste it once, but it wasn't the kind of thing I'd want to drink every day.  It was drinkable, but without any spices or sweeting, it was a little bit raw or unfinished.  I suppose you could acquire a taste for it without too much trouble if you wanted to try that.

So Cindy added a little apple juice and some spices:  cinnamon, ginger, coriander and nutmeg, and then it tasted like.... pumpkin pie.  It was very good and the spices made it much more drinkable.

We tried it out on some friends who are also big Harry Potter fans; they've been to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and had some of the version of pumpkin juice they use there.   It looks from the description as if that version of Pumpkin Juice would be somewhat sweeter than ours because theirs includes apple juice and sugar, as well as some apricot juice, so I'm sure it tasted a good deal different from ours.

Our version was good, and much more drinkable that the raw pumpkin juice was, but I'm still waiting to see what Butterbeer tastes like.

Pumpkin Soup

Herman & Minnie Seegert 50th Anniversary

Cindy made pumpkin soup for dinner last night, and it was delicious.

Thinking of making pumpkin soup reminded Cindy of her childhood, watching her grandmother, Minnie Seegert, making pumpkin soup, so she decided to try to duplicate Minnie's recipe as closely as she could.

Recipe:  Pumpkin Soup--3 large servings

If pumpkin juice is not available, use an additional cup of chicken broth, reducing Chicken soup base to 1 1/2 tsp.

Ingredients:

1 small onion, chopped
1 Tbsp. butter
-----

1/4 cup rice, uncooked
1/2 cup finely shredded fresh pumpkin
-----

2 cups chicken broth
1 cup pumpkin juice (from drained pumpkin puree)
1 Tbsp. Chicken soup base
-----

1 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 tsp. ground coriander
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp. white pepper
salt to taste
-----

1/4 cup whipping cream
-----

freshly grated nutmeg for soup garnish

Instructions:

1.  Sauté onion in butter until soft.

2.  Add rice and finely shredded pumpkin, stir until mixed.  Sauté briefly, approximately 30 seconds.

3.  Add chicken broth, pumpkin juice and chicken soup base.  Bring to a simmer and cook, uncovered, until rice is tender, approximately 15 minutes.

4.  Add pumpkin puree, coriander, nutmeg and white pepper.  Add salt to taste.

Heat until soup returns to a simmer.

5.  Add whipping cream, stirring to combine.  Taste and adjust seasonings.

6.  Serve, topped with a sprinkling of freshly grated nutmeg.

Plethora of Pumpkin

Cinderella Pumpkin

One of the vegetables Cindy planted this summer was a Cinderella Pumpkin, supposed to be one of the best pumpkins for making pies.  She thought that meant the pumpkins it produced would be small, like most pie pumpkins are.  Instead, the plant only produced one pumpkin, but it was much bigger than expected.

Cindy picked it several weeks ago and it's been sitting in the garage maturing since then.  But it couldn't stay there forever, so she cut it up the other day.

The final tally was 5.5 pounds of pureed pumpkin for pies and pumpkin soup, and 1 pound of roasted pumpkin.  That's a whole lotta pumpkin.

There's also some pumpkin juice that will go into the soup.  I'm a huge fan of Harry Potter, so I'll have to see what pumpkin juice tastes like, although I think my potion of choice would probably be Butterbeer.

We may have to do some experimenting with this.

Mom's Favorite Garden Tree

Japanese Maple

Mom and Dad planted a Japanese Maple tree in the back yard many years ago, after we moved into the house in Oregon in 1959.  They planted it in a bed under the canopy of the English Walnut tree, which protected it, but may also have kept it from reaching its full growth.  The blazing red tree provided a pop of brilliant color in an otherwise dark part of the yard.

When I was a kid, I used to love sitting out in the back yard in the summer, reading a book under the walnut tree, watching whatever breeze there was ruffle the delicate leaves of the Japanese Maple.

Through the years Mom enjoyed watching the tree's leaves change colors through the seasons; it started out red in the spring, turned a greenish bronze during the hot Oregon summers, and with the first frost began changing back to the full glory of a deep, vibrant scarlet.  In the years after the walnut was finally taken down, the maple spread out and grew even more beautiful.

Fall Foliage

The maple continued to be a favorite part of the garden over the years for both Mom and Dad.  Dad used to sit beside it to paint some of his watercolors.  In Mom's later years, as her eyesight diminished and her connection with the world began to fade, the Japanese Maple remained the one thing that kept her interest.  It was her way of keeping in touch with the change of seasons; she always enjoyed telling me about its constantly changing beauty.

That's the great thing about planting a garden:  it does grow on you.

The Flower Thieves

Plumeria Flower

Our neighbors across the street, Bob and Maria, have a spectacular Plumaria bush in their yard.

The flowers are gorgeous; so perfect they almost look like they're made of wax.  The aroma of the masses of flowers is stunning.  It's so distracting it's hard to pay attention to anything else when you're near these beautiful flowers.

What's Missing?  Flowers!

The problem, as you can see from this picture of the bush, is that so many people who pass by the bush feel they just must take some of the flowers home with them.  The result is that the middle section of the bush is almost barren of flowers.

We've seen women pushing strollers or people walking dogs stop and pick flowers off the bush.  Bob says he came around the corner one day and found a woman ripping a branch off the bush; she jumped into a waiting car and burned rubber in her haste to leave.

I guess you just don't expect to have to make a Bonnie and Clyde type getaway when you're picking flowers... unless they're not your flowers.

Garden For Wildlife

This Bird's Impressed!

Cindy recently got our yard certified as a Wildlife Habitat by the National Wildlife Federation.

To get certified, you need to provide sources for food, including native plants, seeds, fruits, nuts, berries and nectar; water, including birdbaths, ponds, water gardens or streams; cover, such as thickets, rock piles, or birdhouses; and places to raise young, such as dense shrubs, vegetation, nesting boxes or ponds.

The Rest Of The Birds Are At The Feeders

We definitely have the native plants in the yard and in the canyon part of the yard, and with all the bird seed we put out, there's always plenty of food.

Or At The Birdbath

Cindy keeps the bird feeders and the bird bath filled,  and there are always plenty of customers at the feeders.  The house finches and sparrows eat the mixed seed from the left feeder, the Lesser Goldfinches flock to the Nijer seed in the right hand feeder, the Scrub Jays eat the suet in the hanging feeder and the Towhees and Mourning Doves compete with the squirrels for the seed that falls on the ground.  Once in a while we get a glimpse of the shy California Thrasher, another ground feeder that lives in the chaparral.

And, of course, the dominant Hummingbird fiercely guards the hummer feeder from the competition, although there's always plenty of food in it and plenty of flowering plants around as well.

We chose the fancy sign, but then decided we'd better put it in the back yard because of the number of thefts of markers and plaques around town lately.  But then, the back yard is where most of the wildlife hangs out anyway, so they can enjoy the sign, too.

Milkweed Bugs

Large Milkweed Bugs

A few days ago Cindy and I were out in the butterfly garden in the front yard, when we saw some strange-looking red and black bugs clustered on one of the Asclepia plants.  The bugs all had red bodies with oblong black markings on both head and tail ends and a black band around the middle.  Neither of us had ever seen anything like them before.

A little research revealed that they are Large Milkweed Bugs, Oncopeltus fasciatus.  Who knew there was such a thing?  We didn't.

Asclepia

The bugs love Asclepia, which is, of course, milkweed, and feed on the seed pods.  Because the milkweed sap contains a toxic substance called cardiac glycosides, the bugs themselves become toxic when they ingest the sap, making them unattractive to predators.

Although we've had several Monarch butterflies hanging out in the butterfly garden this summer, we've seen very few Monarch caterpillars this year.  Cindy has been reluctant to spray the Aphids off the plants because she doesn't want to wash off any Monarch eggs, but the plants aren't looking very good because of the honeydew secreted by the Aphids.  The Lady Bugs are eating the Aphids, but we're concerned that they may be eating Monarch eggs, too.

It's not easy being a caterpillar codependent.

A Plot Revealed

Bean Flowers

I knew it was a plot to get me to eat more vegetables, and so far, it's working to perfection.

The Sugar Snap Peas and Oregon Giants are long gone, the tomatoes and zucchini are finally slowing down to a trickle and the Butternut Squash aren't quite ready yet, but now the beans are on the rampage.  

Cindy planted both Green and Violet Beans again this year and rigged up two sets of long poles, with another long pole between them so that the bean vines could have someplace to go.  It's kind of fun to watch the tendrils snaking out, up and over the poles, searching for the next place to go.

Bean Vines Exploring The World

She just brought in a heaping handful of green and violet beans, fresh off the vines.  We had some of the green beans for dinner Sunday and they were wonderful; tender, juicy and sweet.


So if this is a plot to get me to eat vegetables, these green and violet beans really help it along.

After The Rain

After the rain the other day (0.13 " total) the clouds left, the sun came out and the temperature shot up twenty five degrees, into the upper 90s in the space of a couple of hours, the first time we've been over 90 degrees this summer.   It stayed hot Wednesday and Thursday, too.  Then Thursday afternoon, just when everyone's air conditioners were cranking hard, the power went out all over Southern California.  And it stayed out well into the night for most people.

So we hauled out the candles and the bottles of wine, pulled up the chairs on the front porch and caught up on how our neighbors were getting along.

Several of them came by in search of batteries for their flashlights, which reminded me that Cindy had given me a crank-driven work light last Christmas.  I pulled it out, cranked it up and we were amazed at how much light it puts out.  It lit up the kitchen well enough for us to do the dishes, an important task when the Argentine ants are on the march, as they are now.

That Dynamo Work Light is the greatest thing since sliced bread.  It even had a hook to hang it on the cabinet knob, although we could also have used the magnets to attach it to the refrigerator.  And since it works on a crank, we didn't have to worry about dead batteries.  Cindy got it from Lee Valley.

However, the power outage also reminded us that we need to update our emergency supplies and procedures.  Living in a part of the world where earthquakes and wildfires are unfortunately facts of life, we need to be prepared both for evacuating, or for "sheltering in place", depending on the circumstances.

One problem we had during the blackout was the lack of information; we had to depend on a neighbor's cell phone contact with her husband, who had access to County emergency information.  None of our household radios worked because, yes, the batteries were all dead and we didn't think of using our car radio.  So today we ordered a Hand-Crank Radio from Lee Valley and a couple more of the work lights.  The radio also has a solar panel, so the radio can stay charged through either solar or incandescent light.  I really like that feature; it's renewable energy not dependent on batteries that become depleted and have to be disposed of responsibly.

We survived this power outage, and we'll be better prepared for the next emergency.  As long as we have plenty of wine on hand, anyway.

Rain!

We woke up yesterday morning to find water droplets on the car windows.  There wasn't even enough of it to call it a shower, but we continued to get small amounts of moisture throughout the day and into the evening.

It didn't amount to much, but any rain at this time of year is unusual, and very welcome.  Our friends who live in other parts of the country are amused that we get so excited about a little bit of rain, but when it's been four months since the last time it rained, you can't help getting excited.

"What's the weather like in San Diego today?"
"It's cloudy!  We even had a little rain!  It's wonderful!"

So we had a cloudy, relaxing Labor day with the smell of rain in the soft air.  This morning we even had some thunder, which spooked Jenna and Bailey, our two youngest cats; it's so rare here that they may never have heard it before.  They couldn't decide whether the noise was a threat that required them to hide, or an excuse to tear around the house like a herd of stampeding buffalo.  So they did a little of both.

Anyway, we're grateful for any amount of rain at this time of year.

Fiery Skipper

Fiery Skipper

I've been seeing this small orange and brown butterfly in the butterfly garden in our front yard, but didn't know what it was.  Because it's fairly small and moves so fast, I wasn't able to get a good look at it, let alone a picture of it, until today.

However, now that I've managed to get a photo of it, our trusty San Diego Natural History Museum comes through again with the information that this is a Fiery Skipper, one of the most common butterflies in the area.

These butterflies are "abundant around residential lawns".  Our neighbors provide plenty of the Bermuda Grass the Fiery Skipper larvae favor, and we're happy to provide the plants the adult butterflies like for nectar.

Path of Destruction

Tomato Hornworm

I ran across this photo Cindy and I shot three years ago.

Some of her tomatoes were not doing well, so she started investigating and found this suspicious looking hole in the stem of one of the failing plants.

When she sliced the stem open, she found a path of destruction throughout the stem and finally located the culprit:  a tomato hornworm.

It was unexpected because hornworms usually just chow down on the leaves and stems from above, but this one evidently decided to go inside, thus evading detection for a while.

Cindy used to dispose of them by throwing them over the hedge into the canyon, but now she just picks them off the plant and leaves them on the stones under the bird feeder.  The birds do the dirty work for us and they get a tasty snack.  Works for us.

Garden Update

Pepper Crop

I couldn't believe how much the vegetable garden had changed in the nine days I was up in Oregon.

Cindy's pepper plants are now producing red and yellow peppers.  She's freezing most of them for use later on.

The huge Cinderella pumpkin is now revealed in all its mighty glory; the vines had become so riddled with powdery mildew that Cindy ripped them out to let the pumpkin continue to mature until she's ready to deal with it.

We were surprised at the size of this pumpkin; Cindy thought she was planting pumpkins that would be much smaller pie pumpkins, rather than a Jack o'Lantern size pumpkin.  It's probably a very good thing that this is the only pumpkin the vine produced--I love pumpkin pie, but this one pumpkin is going to provide a lot of pumpkin meat for pies.

Cindy said that when she planted it, she was thinking that "Cinderella" referred to something small, not something the size of Cinderella's coach.

If it had gotten much bigger, it could pass for a small Volkswagen.

Welcome, New Ramona

New Ramona

About ten years or so ago we bought a garden ornament of a seated Native American woman called "Ramona With Jug".  We put her on the front porch at first, then moved her to the front of the house where more people could see her.  Cindy loved working in the front yard under Ramona's inspiration and would sometimes clip a rose and leave it on the jug in Ramona's lap.

Several people had asked us if the piece was by San Diego sculptor Donal Hord, but this was a mass-produced piece we bought at a nursery.  Unfortunately, about a year ago some low-life with more brawn than brains just stole her right off the porch, and we've missed her presence ever since.

When we were mulling over what to do for our anniversary at the end of July, I suggested going back to the nursery to see if they had another copy.  They didn't, but referred us to a place across the highway that was able to order one for us.

So we picked her up yesterday and installed her in the back yard on top of the wall by the fence.  Getting her out of the car and onto the wall was a major engineering feat involving a hand truck, ramps, levers and a stack of wood so we could slide her from the hand truck to the wall without actually having to pick her up.  She's HEAVY--I don't know how the scumbag who stole the original one did it, but I hope it cost him a hernia and a couple of slipped disks for his trouble.

Anyway, we finally got her into her new place in the back yard, where we can enjoy her presence while we're back there.

That should make her much less vulnerable to human thieves and, as far as we know, ground squirrels don't like to eat clay.

Garden Delights

I love these flowers.  I don't know what they are*; the blooms don't last long, but they're beautiful while they last.

*  O.K., my gardening guru (Cindy) says they're Calandrinia.  Beautiful.