A New Path

Before--A Sea of Landscaping Fabric 

The back yard renovation project is coming along nicely.  Greg Eubanks, our landscaper from Serenity Gardens, finished the flagstone pathway that goes from the edge of the patio to the gate in the back fence yesterday.

Greg Lays Out the Pathway

Cindy had put down landscaping fabric, aka weed block, about a year ago to try to kill off the Bermuda grass, which we think could probably survive a nuclear bomb blast.  When Greg cut the fabric to dig out the space for the stone pathway, I was surprised to see that the plan had actually worked; there was no Bermuda grass to be seen.  Of course, we know better than to assume that it's really, really gone, so Greg put down more landscaping fabric before he began laying the stone.

Once the pathway was laid out, Greg and Brian began putting the decomposed granite down.  The DG changed the whole look of the yard immediately.  Well, black weed block to beautiful gold DG, I guess that's not too surprising.

It's amazing what a difference it makes to the whole yard.

The New DG and Pathway

 

Pot Lifter

Cindy wanted to move the pots containing the three citrus trees (we still don't know what they are) last weekend, so we hitched up the Pot Lifter, picked each of them up and moved them to where she wanted them.  This thing is great for moving heavy objects, whether it's a potted plant, a big rock or whatever.  It's basically a sling that snaps around the pot or rock; gravity makes the nylon straps stretch tight and you use the handles to lift the object.  It takes two people, but it's amazing how easy it is to lift heavy objects and carry them to where you want them.

When Cindy told me she wanted a pot lifter a couple of years ago, I assumed she was talking about a piece of kitchen equipment for moving soup pots or something like that.  I scoured kitchen stores looking for such a thing:  Great News, Crate & Barrel, Williams Sonoma, The Pot Rack in Jacksonville, but no luck.  Nobody knew what I was talking about.

Finally, in the Lee Valley Catalog, I finally had a blinding revelation:  "Oh, it's a piece of GARDEN equipment."  Duh.  Anyway, I got it for her and my back and my knees have been very grateful for it ever since.

Whose Nuts?

Mystery Nuts

When Cindy was digging in one of the new raised beds to add holders for the plexiglass panels she uses to keep the varmints out of the beds, she came upon a cache of twenty or so nuts that some critter had buried in the corner of the bed behind the irrigation connection.

We have no idea what kind of nuts they are or who stashed them there.  Some of the nuts had already begun to sprout, so Cindy popped some potting soil into small pots and replanted them.  Maybe when they leaf out we'll have some idea what they are.

We put some peanuts out in a container for the Scrub Jays a couple of days ago and noticed that they were all gone within a day, but there were no peanut shells on the ground.  Our guess is that the Jays carried the peanuts off to cache them for later, like the other critter did with the mystery nuts, so maybe they'll sprout and we'll have peanut plants growing on the hillside sometime in the future.

Frisky Squirrels

Surveying The Yard

I guess it was appropriate for Valentine's Day yesterday that the ground squirrels were feeling a bit frisky.

First one of them climbed up on one of the blueberry bush containers and seemed to be surveying the surrounding yard.  The squirrels have been stuffing themselves on the birdseed and suet the birds drop from the feeders.  We have a baffle on the feeder pole, so they can't get directly into the feeders, although, unlike tree squirrels, these squirrels don't seem to be great climbers.

Squirrel Romance?

He must have liked what he saw from his perch, because he was soon joined by a second squirrel and they chased each other around in the decomposed granite for a while.

Unfortunately, this probably means there will be the pitter patter of little squirrel feet around the yard before long.  Bet they'll like blueberries, too.

Keeping Up With the Jack Hammers

Cindy called me last night and said she thought the Mayan temple across the canyon was on fire--we're pretty sensitive about fire.  Then we realized that the neighbors had installed a long horizontal fire feature that we had not seen before.  

We don't know what their name is, so we call them the Jack Hammers, on account of Mr. Hammer's favorite landscaping tool.  He has spent the last couple of summers relentlessly carving terraced areas out of the hillside, building walls and constructing an outdoor pavilion of stone work that we've dubbed the Mayan Temple.  Between Jack's efforts and the city's heavy earth moving equipment constantly digging up the streets, it's been pretty noisy in our neighborhood the last couple of summers.

The Hammers' pavilion is almost always brightly lit at night and has a water feature that runs constantly, but last night was the first time we've ever seen it on fire.  Maybe this means they're finally done with it.  We can only hope.

Mr. Upside Down Finally Hatches

Mr. Upside Down

Mr. Upside Down, the Monarch Butterfly chrysalis we've been watching for the last month finally hatched out on Monday.  This guy was sloooowww.  He took his sweet time about the whole process, from attaching to the fence, to forming the chrysalis, to emerging from the chrysalis and finally to taking to flight.

The female Monarch (Cindy named her "Mona") who hatched out the week before was much more business-like about the process; she hatched out, flexed her wings a few times, and took off and we haven't seen her since.

Mr. Upside Down Attached

Chrysalis

Mr. Upside Down, on the other hand, stayed on the fence for several days before he attached.  Then it took several more days before he began to form his chrysalis.  He took so long about it that we began to think he was dead, but he finally got it done.

Mona hatched out of her chrysalis in 27 days; this guy took over a month.  I started watching the chrysalis last Friday, thinking he might be on the same schedule, but nothing much happened either Friday or Saturday, except that I got very tired of sitting there waiting for something to happen.

I continued to watch because I thought I probably would never get a better chance to see a butterfly emerge than this because of the very accessible position of this chrysalis on the fence.  The third chrysalis is high up in the Bougainvillea and we can barely see it.

The one thing that did happen, however, was that the chrysalis became noticeably darker and more transparent.  In fact, we were able to see the orange and black wing markings forming within the chrysalis.

Wings Forming

The chrysalis looked like a beautiful, glowing jewel whenever the sun was on it.  It also had a row of  little golden dots about a third of the way down from the top and other little gold dots in other places.  As the chrysalis darkened, another row of gold dots formed across the top of the chrysalis.

It's Starting!

By lunchtime Monday it looked like it might happen at any moment, but I was getting very tired of sitting on the overturned bucket and my hand was cramping from holding my camera.  Cindy suggested I get a more comfortable chair from the front porch.  When I brought the chair back, I noticed the chrysalis looked a little different and had in fact started to open.

Here It Comes!

Cindy and I watched in fascination as the new butterfly crawled out of the chrysalis at last.  It clung to the shreds of the chrysalis as its wings unfolded and steadily grew longer and fuller.  

Within just a few minutes the wings, which originally were shorter than the butterfly's body, lengthened  and grew longer than the body.  

He's Finally Out

He hung onto the fence for at least an hour as the wings gradually filled out and dried off.  Then he tried to climb up the fence but slipped and sort of plummeted down onto a potted salvia at the bottom of the fence.  

After a while he flexed his wings a few times, but that was pretty much it for the day--he stayed on the flower pot over night.  He flew off to the Bougainvillea the next day, but didn't venture beyond that.  It was cold, foggy and windy most of the day and he evidently didn't want to venture out into the world.  We began to worry that he might not have enough energy to get going so he could fly off and locate food, but this morning it was warm and sunny again and he was gone.  

It's A Boy!

Cold Santa Ana Winds

Yesterday was about as much of winter as we get in San Diego with chilly Santa Ana winds blowing most of the day.  The winds knocked over several big Eucalyptus trees in La Jolla and brought down palm fronds in our neighborhood.  Fortunately no one was killed or injured by those Eucalyptus, but they crushed several cars.

Although we had our two palm trees trimmed a couple of months ago, the wind brought down the butts of a couple of the fronds that had been trimmed.  Although these butts don't look like much, they are pretty dense plant material and very heavy.  If they fall from a height, like off a fifty foot tall palm tree, they can cause a lot of damage to anything below.  We learned the hard way not to park our cars under them; we had a windshield smashed by one about ten years ago.

The Santa Ana is usually a hot wind that blows out of the deserts to the east between August and November, but because it's cold there now, the winds are cold when they blow in our direction.  Our friends and family are currently struggling with blizzards in the mid-west and east coast, so we're not complaining too loudly about the wind.  The last time it snowed in the city of San Diego was 1963 according to friends who lived here then.

Cindy worked out in the yard yesterday morning, trying to secure plants against the wind, but the buffeting of the wind was really exhausting.  One thing about winters in our climate is that there's not a lot of down time for gardeners to sit around and plan what they want to plant; there's always something outside that requires attention, or watering, or weeding, or pruning, or....  The list is endless.

O.K., enough whining.  By now, you've probably correctly concluded that San Diegans are complete weather wimps.  And so we are.

Butterfly Garden

Monarch Butterfly

We were so thrilled Monday to see the first of the Monarch butterflies hatch out and fly off.  We've really tried to make the front yard into a place where butterflies, humming birds and bees can find the food, water and plants they need to thrive.

It became apparent after the first caterpillar fiasco last October, when the Scrub Jays evidently picked off all the Monarch caterpillars, that we needed to keep the butterfly plants away from the bird feeders in the back yard.  Just one of those moments that make you smack your forehead and say, "Duh!"

So Cindy moved all the Asclepia plants to the front yard where we already had the Bush Germander, Mexican Heather, Butterfly Bush and Yarrow that butterflies like.  We also have the Bougainvillea that several of them have chosen for making their chrysalises.  There are several plants that Humming Birds like, but the hummers don't seem to bother the butterflies.  Other birds don't seem to spend much time in the front yard, probably because the shrubs are too low to provide much cover and the bird feeders and water are in the back yard, where there's better cover and more nesting sites.

We're lucky to live in San Diego, California, where the temperate climate makes it possible for some butterflies, such as the Monarchs and Painted Ladies, to live here year round.  We also enjoy the Zoro Butterfly Garden, a sunken garden that was originally designed as a nudist area for the 1935 California-Pacific Expositon in the city's incredibly beautiful Balboa Park.