I've said before that San Diego has three seasons: rainy, fog and fire. The rainy season usually lasts from November through about April. Fog season is May and June, called May Gray and June Gloom, and fire season, our least favorite season, is the months of August, September and October.
There is another season here, though, that's my favorite: avocado season.
I love avocados almost as much as I love potatoes. Sometimes more, and that's saying something.
Unfortunately, avocados require quite a bit of water and the prolonged California drought has taken a heavy toll on them. A friend who owns an avocado grove told us last year that they had to "stump out" half their trees to cut down on their water usage. Another friend who has one tree says his tree's productivity is way down this year. That may be due to the drought, or it might be that the tree is just going through a cycle of low productivity.
But the good news is that the avocados the trees are producing are still big and luscious and wonderful. Yum.
Friday, February 19, 2016
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Bees Can't Swim
When a new neighbor moved his bee hives in across the canyon, we noticed that the bees were soon drowning in our birdbath, so last year I created a bee landing platform out of cedar boards with holes drilled through them for the bees that was supposed to alleviate the problem. See: Water For Bees
It worked...sort of. The bucket we initially had the platform in turned out to be much too deep; it was a pain to fill and the platform got stuck in the bucket as the water level sank. So Cindy found a shallower bowl to put inside the bucket and that worked for a while.
Eventually, though, the cedar platform became so water logged that it sank below the water level and became even more of a hazard to the bees than the birdbath was, so Cindy took it out and we forgot about it for a while.
Since we've been having unseasonably warm weather lately, though, we've both been fishing drowning bees out of the birdbath again, so we've filled the bowl back up and the bees seem to be re-discovering it.
We're hoping it works better this time. We want all our critter friends--both avian and apian-- to be happy and safe.
It worked...sort of. The bucket we initially had the platform in turned out to be much too deep; it was a pain to fill and the platform got stuck in the bucket as the water level sank. So Cindy found a shallower bowl to put inside the bucket and that worked for a while.
Eventually, though, the cedar platform became so water logged that it sank below the water level and became even more of a hazard to the bees than the birdbath was, so Cindy took it out and we forgot about it for a while.
Since we've been having unseasonably warm weather lately, though, we've both been fishing drowning bees out of the birdbath again, so we've filled the bowl back up and the bees seem to be re-discovering it.
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| Bees On The Edge |
We're hoping it works better this time. We want all our critter friends--both avian and apian-- to be happy and safe.
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Regicide?
We found a couple of Monarch butterfly caterpillars recently, both just sort of trucking along far from any Asclepia plants, their chief food source, so we transferred them to the one healthy Asclepia plant in the yard.
They both happily set to chewing away on the leaves and eventually the larger of the two set off to find a place to form a chrysalis.
The site it finally selected was the underside of a rail on one of Cindy's anti-varmint panels.
That was OK; it should be fine there as long as we remember it's there.
We continued to keep an eye on the second caterpillar, but today I found it wrapped up in spider web, looking dried out and dead.
I guess the spiders have to eat, too, but I wish they would pick on the less beneficial insects and leave the pollinators, including the Monarch caterpillars, alone.
They both happily set to chewing away on the leaves and eventually the larger of the two set off to find a place to form a chrysalis.
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| Looking For A Location |
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| Chrysalis |
We continued to keep an eye on the second caterpillar, but today I found it wrapped up in spider web, looking dried out and dead.
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| Spiders Got This One |
I guess the spiders have to eat, too, but I wish they would pick on the less beneficial insects and leave the pollinators, including the Monarch caterpillars, alone.
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