Wardrobe Malfunction

Cindy has been revamping the irrigation on the new raised beds recently, which requires her to spend long periods of time on her hands and knees burrowing into the soil, digging up the leaking irrigation lines.  She's careful to cover up from the sun with long sleeves, hat and sunscreen to protect her head and arms, but she didn't count on her shirt and jeans parting company.

The result was a large sunburned area on her lower back; if there were a couple of eyes above it, it would look like a huge smiley face on her lower back.

I guess she needs a little bit longer shirt.  You just never think about putting sunscreen back there.

Garden Update

We've finished the first part of the back yard renovation project, so here are some updated pictures, starting with the front yard.

Front Yard Looking Good

The back yard is looking great, too, with the new stone path leading out toward the back fence.

The New Stone Path

Cindy's new raised beds with their protective anti-varmint shields have now been planted.

The decomposed granite, (DG) makes everything look better throughout the yards.

Old and New Raised Beds

The new planting area behind the garage has some plants and some seeds started.

Planting Space 

The birds seem to like the feeders and birdbath, considering how often they empty the feeders.

Birdbath and Lavender

And, of course, there are still future projects to do, like the area on the northwest side, where we plan to take out the Eugenia stumps, tear out the boxwood hedge, construct another retaining wall similar to the one out behind the fence, and add some terraced steps down toward the canyon.

Future Project

One thing we know for sure--there will always plenty of projects to do.

Return of the Monarchs

We've had a few butterflies of various types visit our butterfly garden in the front yard since the two Monarch caterpillars hatched out in late January (See "Mr. Upside Down Finally Hatches" and "Houston, We Have Lift-Off"), but until yesterday, only one Monarch.

Butterfly Bush

Now we have a Monarch fluttering around the yard, to the consternation of our cat Bailey, who has temporarily given up her lizard watching duties to follow the flight of the Monarch around the yard.  It's a good thing she hasn't figured out how to open the front door.

The butterflies seem to like the Butterfly Bush (Buddleia ), as well as the Yarrow, the Asclepia and even the roses.  We know the Buddleia is considered a non-native invasive species, but then so is a lot of the other stuff we seem to have growing in the yard.  It's amazing how well some things do in poor soil with little or no water.

I've read that one of the nicknames for Buddleia is "summer lilac", a name that evokes the wonderful scent of heavily laden lilacs in the Spring, a pleasure we unfortunately have to forego in San Diego; the climate doesn't have enough "chill hours" for us to grow them here.   I told one friend recently that she should consider her lilacs to be the reward for the cold, rotten winter they've had in the Midwest.  Lilacs about the only thing that makes us regret living in such a temperate climate.  Lilac scented candles just aren't the same.

We're glad the butterflies, bees and hummingbirds like the Buddleia, anyway.

Compost Happens

Screening out twigs and rocks

Compost happens, but sometimes a good compost bin helps it along.  We originally put our bin in the southwest corner of the yard, but it was shaded by the neighbor's big pine tree.  It wasn't getting very hot in that location, so we moved it to the northwest corner, where it catches more direct sun for longer periods of the day.

This year Cindy used the cover crop she grew last winter as mulch in the raised beds, and then put the excess into the compost bin, layering it with straw, since we don't have any leaves to use for brown material.  We shredded some of our old files and put some of the shredded paper as brown matter, too.  It's strangely satisfying to think of your old bills and financial statements decaying away to provide food for the table.

Chopping up the green material was a chore; she first tried chopping it by hand with various clippers, but her hands got really tired using that method.  She finally bought an electric leaf chopper that uses monofilament line to chop the material into finer pieces than she could do with the clippers.  It was messy, with pieces of shredded greenery all over the place, but it got the job done.

All that nitrogen rich green material got the pile in the bin cooking and it was amazing how fast the pile shrank as the decomposition process proceeded.

That worked really well, and in about a month she had enough dark, rich compost to spread on the raised beds before planting.

Minding Our Peas and Qs

Sugar Pea and Snow Pea

After I put up the post about our Sugar Peas yesterday, Cindy pointed out to me that the pea we were showing was actually a Snow Pea, not a Sugar Pea, so I got a quick course in which was which.

The pea on the left in this picture is a Super Sugar Snap Pea.  They're great for eating raw; I love the crunch when you bite into them, either on their own or in a salad.

The pea on the right is an Oregon Giant Snow Pea, bred at Oregon State University "especially for fresh harvesting with sweet flavor and extra crunchy texture."  Despite their provenance in the home of the Oregon State Beavers, traditional enemies of the University of Oregon Ducks, they are still great tasting peas.

The seeds for both types of peas came from Renee's Garden, provider of heirloom flower and vegetable seeds.

Sugar Peas

Oregon Giant Snow Peas In The Pod

I've never been a fan of green peas.  In fact, I hate them so much I usually pick them out of whatever dish they're in and don't eat them, to Cindy's disgust.  She loves peas and can't understand why I don't.  I'm not sure I understand it myself; it's not the size, shape or color, because I absolutely love capers, which are about the same size, shape and color, so it must the the taste.  I just don't like the taste of peas.

I guess I'm from the generation whose mothers took canned or frozen peas and then cooked the bejasus out of them until they were mushy.

But sweet peas or sugar peas in the pod are a different story.  I like them and I'll eat them.

Our sweet peas have been climbing up the poles and are starting to produce pods, so now we're having pea pods in salads and sometimes just on their own.

It's amazing what a difference it makes to have your own food growing in the garden.

Screen Project Completed

Raised Bed With Screens

We've now completed the enclosures for all three of the raised vegetable beds, and they're looking pretty good.  The two smaller beds, including the one with the tomatoes, are completely enclosed by the screens and the larger bed is about two-thirds enclosed.  

We didn't enclose one end of the large bed because so far the neighborhood critters haven't displayed any interest in eating the leeks, chives or basil planted there.  However, that meant that Cindy had to install some additional hardware cloth down in the dirt to keep the varmints from simply digging under the screens at that end of the bed and getting into the good stuff in the rest of the bed.  

Tomatoes Are Growing!

The tomatoes have almost doubled in size since Cindy planted them last week, so it was time for the tomato cages to come out before they get any bigger.  We're hoping it will be a good year for tomatoes and a shutout year for varmints.  

Unfortunately, one type of predator we can't keep out with the screens is the birds we've been encouraging to visit our yard with the bird feeders.  This morning we watched as a California Towhee flew over the screen to invade the vegetable bed, pulled up one of Cindy's earthworms, and then hopped up the bean trellis before he flew off.  

Later a Spotted Towhee made a serious attempt to get at the ripening blueberries.  The Towhees are beneficial in many ways; Cindy leaves any slugs she finds in the garden under the bird feeder for the Towhees to dispose of, and she's even seen them fly up and knock aphids off the roses in the front yard, but dammit, they'd better leave our blueberries alone.  

Golden Garden Spider

Golden Garden Spider

One of the insects I've noticed over the years is a large spider that has taken up residence in the dwarf Fortnight Lily in the front yard.

According to the San Diego Museum of Natural History, this is a female Golden Garden Spider, Argiope aurantia.  The web this spider builds is a beautiful structure, precisely constructed and balanced.  The zigzag pattern of silk in the middle of the web strengthens the structure.  Then she just sits there waiting for flying insects to fly into the web.  I'm hoping she'll trap lots of the pesky black flies that plague us all summer.

I had noticed a much smaller but similar spider in a separate web close to the female spider's web and assumed that it was a juvenile staying close to Mom, but it appears that this is really the male spider, staying nearby until she's ready to mate.  Guess he doesn't want to miss his opportunity.

Fortnight Lily

I like the fortnight lilies, of which we used to have four or five in the front yard.  The problem was that they kept growing larger and larger, taking up more growing space, and they also dropped seed pods all over the yard, creating even more plants that threatened to take over the space altogether.

Cindy got tired of uprooting the numerous seedlings and finally just took all but one of them out and planted other plants.  She left the one dwarf plant as a concession to me, so now it not only produces beautiful flowers but also provides a home for our Golden Garden Spiders, otherwise known as our Insect Control Officers.

Get those black flies!

Alligator Lizard

Cindy found a San Diego Alligator Lizard (Elgaria multicarinata webbii) in the garage yesterday.  It was missing most of its tail, so she wasn't sure at first it was really a lizard because it was so big and blunt looking.  It tried to get under the refrigerator but was too big.

Unfortunately, it then ran back into the corner of the garage where we keep the golf clubs we never use anymore since SOMEBODY became obsessed with GARDENING and won't take a day off to play golf.

Anyway, we figure the lizard will eat all the spiders in that part of the garage, then leave when it gets hungry again.  So that's the plan.  They're not poisonous, but I'm not going in there after it.

First Blueberries!

Blueberries Getting Ripe

We've been watching the blueberries on our three bushes as they've set on and gradually started turning blue.

Today Cindy found three that had fallen off the bushes, so we washed them off and tried them.  They were still a little tart, but they're our blueberries.

Grasshopper

Big Grasshopper

We found a huge grasshopper in the back yard the other day, just a few feet from the new raised bed where the tomatoes had just been planted.

The grasshopper was so well camouflaged that I almost stepped on it before I saw it.  Once I did see it, we had to figure out what to do about it.  We have a hard time killing any creature except mosquitoes and poisonous spiders, but when it comes to insects that eat plants at the rate grasshoppers eat tomatoes, we have to do something about it.

So we trapped the critter and carted it off to an undisclosed location and let it go.

We're probably the only people who practice "catch and release" with grasshoppers.

"Deploy Varmint Repelling Shields, Mr. Sulu!"

Varmint Repelling Shields

"Varmint Repelling Shields deployed, Captain!"

At least they've been deployed in the first of the two new raised beds.  The second bed will have to wait until tomorrow, and the much larger original raised bed is going to take a lot longer, but this bed has the newly transplanted TOMATOES!!!, so it took first priority.

The bottom part of each piece is hardware cloth and the top is plexiglass.  Unfortunately, these things don't photograph very well, so we left the brown protective paper on one sheet of the plexiglass to make it show up better for the picture.  Each panel is screwed to stakes that fit into PVC tubes strapped to the inside the bed.  Cindy has developed this system over the last ten or so years, refining it as needed.

Original Panels

The three remaining original panels can be seen in the background of this photo around three sides of the old raised bed.  The old panels consist of plexiglass attached to the stakes which were originally just stuck into the ground.  That got harder as time went on, so Cindy added the refinement of the PVC tubes, which can be seen in the corners of the new raised bed in the foreground.

The old panels were very effective at keeping the various tomato-eating varmints, such as ground squirrels, raccoons, skunks and neighborhood cats out of the vegetable beds, but they also cut down on the air flow to the plants.  Some of the plants seemed to get overheated, so we're hoping that they will do better with having more air circulate through the hardware cloth at the bottom.