Pickles and Zucchini

I love the Pickles comic strip, and today's was particularly appropriate-- click here to see it:  Pickles.

The reason the cartoon is so appropriate is that Cindy forgot to check the zucchini bed for a couple of days and found three monster Clarimore zucchinis lurking among the vines.

These things were huge.  So we've been eating zucchini, zucchini and more zucchini lately.  She's frozen some and managed to foist some off on a neighbor, but I have a feeling there are more of them out there.

Maybe for Halloween I'll dress up as a huge zucchini.

Pacific Slope Flycatcher

We think we've finally identified the bird we've been calling the Slide Whistle Bird; it's a Pacific Slope Flycatcher.

Cindy had been seeing a small, fluffy bird with a short beak and a yellowish breast in the neighbor's shrubbery, and this morning she saw it again as it was singing.

This is the bird we originally thought might be the bird that we later identified as the Tropical Kingbird because of its similar coloring, but the Tropical Kingbird is much larger, with a longer tail.

Since the principal food sources for both birds consist of insects, they are more than welcome in our yard.

Tropical KIngbird

Tropical Kingbird

We were eating breakfast outside on the patio this morning when we noticed a Tropical Kingbird sitting on the power line over the canyon.

Cindy saw a couple more of them swoop by while we were watching the one on the wire, so we know there are more of them in the area.

We've been hearing a very interesting bird call lately but haven't been able to identify the bird making it.  The call sounds like a kid's slide whistle; up the scale, then back down.

I've tried the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's All About Birds guide, which has sound clips of typical sound for each bird, but couldn't identify the sound.

I also tried the San Diego Audobon Society's website with no luck on identifying the sound.  However, I did learn from the latter site that California is noted among birders as the home of six bird species of very limit range:  the California Quail, California Condor, California Gnatcatcher; California Least Tern; the California Thrasher and the California Towhee.  We have at least two of these species, the Thrasher and the brown California Towhee, visiting our yard regularly.

In fact, the towhees are all over our yard all the time.  Who knew they were rare?  The California Towhee's coloring is pretty drab; basic brown with some rust colored feathers near the tail.  The bird we really enjoy seeing is its relative, the beautiful Spotted Towhee with its black head, white breast, orange sides and black and white spotted wings, but we don't see these birds as often as we see the California Towhees.

Too Darn Hot

Sun Baked Parsley

As the rest of the country cools off for the arrival of Autumn, San Diego is experiencing a wave of very hot weather.  We had two consecutive days of temperatures over 100 degrees last week and several others in the 90s.  

I think I can hear my brother laughing all the way from Southern Oregon, where they routinely have several weeks of 100 plus degree weather every summer, but San Diego just isn't used to this kind of weather.  

We can retreat into our air conditioning, but our plants stay outside.  Cindy has been viewing the damage; parsley that was thriving a week ago is now a sunburnt mess, or was until she ripped it out. 

The leaves on the new avocado tree are showing quite a bit of sun scorch, even though Cindy has been watering it every day.  

Avocado Leaves

One of her Master Gardener friends reported burn marks on orchids, succulents, agave, bromeliads, honeysuckle, Boston fern, umbrella plant and some trees.  

We expected to see the California Ground Squirrels doing the back stroke in the bird bath, but they seem to have retreated to their presumably cooler underground burrows.  

Amaranth

Amaranth

One of the best things about doing this blog for the last two years is that I've learned a lot while I've been doing it.

Cindy does all the work, I wander out into the garden occasionally, find something new and ask her what it is and then go look up more information on it.  Plus, I get to take pictures of all this interesting stuff and post it on the blog.

One of these interesting things is the Amaranth plant growing in our garden.

I thought the bright purple flowers were very pretty;  I should have known better.  Cindy tells me that Amaranth seeds are used as grain throughout the world even though they're not a true grain; they're a "pseudo cereal," but unlike some of the true cereals, they have no gluten and so can be used in gluten-free recipes.

It has the potential to reduce cholesterol and is also high in protein content, including the amino acid lysine, which is missing from most other grains.  Apparently a very healthy addition to the diet.

I have no idea what Amaranth tastes like, but I suspect I'll be finding that out one of these days.

Attack From The Air

Bean Leaves

The green bean plants suffered a double whammy this year.  Not only have their roots been attacked by the gophers from below, but the flock of Lesser Goldfinches that patronize our bird feeder have decided to vary their diets by noshing on the upper leaves of the green bean plants.

They have now eaten so much of these plants that the top leaves resemble lace curtains more than they do plants leaves.

They've also been hitting the catnip plants on the side of the house, but they're probably getting seeds from the flowers on those plants.  Unless it's the catnip itself they like.

They're cute little birds and fun to watch.

Covert Operation

Beans Reach For The Sky

Cindy's green beans have been fading a bit lately, which is a good thing since she has already stuffed the freezer with as many packages of frozen beans as it can handle.

Still, she was surprised as how rapidly some of the plants were fading; many of the leaves seemed to be shriveling as if their roots had been cut off.

That led her to peel back the experimental mylar mulch she had used in that vegetable bed to encourage plant growth, and discovered.... yup, gophers.

She knew that these varmints were gophers instead of the ubiquitous California Ground Squirrels because they had left the tell-tale surface mounds of gophers instead of digging deeper tunnels the way the squirrels do.  

They were able to dig into this raised bed because she had decided not to line the bottom of it with hardware cloth as she had most of the previous beds we had constructed.  So that made it easier for the varmints to tunnel in, and she hadn't noticed because the mylar covered any signs of their covert operation.

So that means a fairly extensive remodel of the two beds is needed to line the beds with hardware cloth and also to amend the soil.

But who knows, maybe the gophers will have softened up the ground below and make it easier to dig it out.

Or maybe we could contract it out to the squirrels.

No Caterpillars

A few days after my post about the Anise Swallowtail caterpillars we found devouring the parsley leaves, they all disappeared.

One of the caterpillars was huge; he was obviously just about ready to find a place to attach and form a chrysalis, but the other two were smaller.  Since it looked like they prefer to attach to an upright twig or branch, we put a garden stake in the ground among the parsley, but it doesn't look like any have attached to it.

So the pack of boisterous Scrub Jays that were hanging around the suet feeder, or one of the brown California Towhees probably got all the caterpillars.

Too bad, we were looking forward to trying to watch them hatch.