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.