Sea Holly

We've been trying to add more plants to the butterfly garden in the front yard to attract more butterflies. The Monarchs prefer the Asclepia; in fact, they like it so much that the caterpillars who hatched out in the late fall pretty much stripped all the Asclepia plants out there.  The plants are coming back slowly, but the Monarchs will also reappear soon and start laying eggs again, so we're hoping to have enough Asclepia by the time they do.

Sea Holly

While we love Monarchs, we also want to provide plants that other butterflies may like as well.  Cindy is going to take some parsley and some of the volunteer dill plants that have sprouted in the vegetable garden in back and transplant them to the butterfly garden to attract more of the Anise Swallowtails and other butterflies that like those plants.  We're hoping that if we can attract them to the butterfly garden,  that will keep them far enough away from the Scrub Jays that visit the vegetable garden in the back yard; Scrub Jays regard any caterpillars in the backyard as a legitimate part of the free buffet.

She also recently planted a very beautiful Sea Holly (Eryngium) in the butterfly garden, hoping to attract butterflies such as the Painted Ladies and Mylitta Crescents that like thistles.

I don't know about the Checkerspot butterflies, though:  They like figworts, and I have no idea what a figwort is.

It's A Dilly

The cartoon character Ed Crankshaft has been planning his summer vegetable garden, which his son-in-law has dubbed "Farmageddon" (January 14, 2013).

In Monday's cartoon, Ed was ordering seeds for the garden and told his startled daughter "you'd be surprised how much cheaper it is by the ton."  http://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/crankshaft/s-1265116  (January 21, 2013).

We got a good laugh out of this one, because Cindy has also been ordering seeds for her garden.  Lots of seeds.  The UPS truck pulled up yesterday afternoon while we were sitting on the front porch and, yup, another box of seeds.

Dill Plants

Among the seeds Cindy ordered were some dill seeds.  She says she's never had much luck growing dill from seeds, but decided to try it anyway.  Then when she was preparing one of the raised beds the other day, she discovered that last year's dill plant had self-sown, and she had lots of little dill plants all over that bed.

Lots and lots of little dill plants.

So it looks like we'll have plenty of dill this year.  And the year after that, and the year after that....

Satsuma

Satsuma

Cindy bought a Satsuma mandarin or tangerine plant last year.  She put it in a large pot by the gate from the driveway into the back yard, hooked up the drip irrigation and it's been thriving there ever since.

The fruit is finally ripe and it's sweet and yummy, without seeds.

I'm sure it's part of her plan to get me to eat more fruit, but so far it seems to be working.

Powered By The Sun

Our new neighbors have just finished installing solar panels on their roof.  When they bought the house, it had several solar hot water panels on the roof, but they had been there for many years.  One of the panels had sprung a leak earlier last year and wasn't really functioning.

So the new owners had the roof re-done, replaced the hot water panels and also installed some photovoltaic panels on the rest of the roof.

I'm always happy to see people in Southern California installing photovoltaic solar systems.  With the amount of sunshine we get in San Diego, it just makes so much sense to do that.

We're just finishing up our seventh year with our 4.1 kilowatt photovoltaic solar system on our own roof.  In that time we've generated 56,128.3 kilowatt hours worth of electricity, which we feed into the SDGE grid, then draw back the power we need from the grid.  That translates to 69,599 pounds of CO2 we've avoided, or the energy to make 2,049,215 cups of coffee or power 1,117 homes for one day.

We would feel pretty good about that, except that I read recently that Germany, equivalent in size to the state of Montana, generates solar electricity at the rate of 22 GIGAwatt hours of electricity, powering approximately 8 million German homes.  Considering that normal German weather is 50 degrees and raining, that's really amazing energy production.

German leaders attribute the growth of German solar power to the German Renewable Energies Act enacted in 2000.  Their inspiration for passing the legislation?  President Jimmy Carter's Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI), which was later dumped by Ronald Reagan.  If the U.S. had followed through with Carter's emphasis on solar and other renewable sources of energy over the last 30 years, the U.S. would be a lot further along the road toward energy independence than we are now.  http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-23/can-the-u-dot-s-dot-reproduce-germany-energy-revolution

But, it's good to see our San Diego neighbors doing what they can.

Yes, Deer

We were very puzzled when our two small citrus trees out behind the fence were radically "pruned" early last year.  The cuts on the stems were very sharp, not shredded or chewed.  We speculated that it might be the usual suspects, AKA the California Ground Squirrels or a giant rabbit, or even a neighbor trying out new pruning shears.   (See New Garden Mystery, January 2012)).

But everybody else said some variation of "it's a deer."  We initially had trouble accepting that explanation; we live in the middle of a city of 1.3 million people, after all.  Our neighborhood is surrounded by freeways and we had never seen any evidence of deer in the area.

Then, on Labor Day morning, a (you guessed it) DEER crashed through the plate glass window of the International House of Pancakes in Mission Valley, about four miles down the valley from us.  The IHOP manager finally opened the emergency exit and the deer bolted off into the blue.  They speculated that the deer had come down the nearby San Diego River bed and across the parking lot to crash into the restaurant. Check out the video at: http://www.10news.com/news/video-shows-deer-running-through-mission-valley-ihop-2 .

So we finally had to accept the idea that it really was a deer that had followed the river down and chomped our trees on his way to the restaurant.

Probably looking for a little citrus to go with his pancakes, I guess.

The Extravagant Perfume of Orange Blossoms

After The Deer Pruned It

The citrus tree that was so severely pruned by the deer last January (See New Garden Mystery) has bounced back nicely and is now loaded with leaves and white blossoms.

And those blossoms are giving off the unmistakable scent of orange blossoms.  This was one of the bushes we thought had been mislabled by the nursery, but it's now clear that this really is an orange.

I love the scent of orange blossoms; I'm almost overwhelmed by the wonderful scent every time I walk past this plant.  It always reminds me of the first time Cindy and I went to Temecula.  It was March and she drove down from Riverside and I came up from San Diego to meet at the Mount Palomar winery to consult on a project we were both working on.

I drove home through the numerous orange groves with my windows down so I could smell the orange blossoms all the way.

Today

So now we have our own orange blossoms, and they  remind me of that meeting every time I smell them.

Wonderful.

AB Welcomes the New Year

AB, Cindy's Assistant Bear, has apparently decided that he's done with winter and ready for the Spring gardening season.

Either that or else he went to one hell of a New Year's Eve party.