As Close As We're Getting To Chickens

Chicken in the Coop?

Cindy would like to have backyard chickens, but (fortunately) our house is too close to the next door neighbor's house--the city requires that the chicken coop be 50 feet from a dwelling.  The eggs would be nice, but chickens are a lot more work than I think she really wants to expend on them.  Besides, she could never bring herself to kill one of them for dinner--they would all die of old age, unless the coyotes in the canyon ate them, and that would bring on another set of problems.

So I got her some metal chickens last year and she has them dispersed around the garden.  Recently I noticed that she had put some "poultry netting"--we used to call it "chicken wire"-- around one of the metal chicks.

Still longing for that elusive chicken coop, I guess.

The Beat Goes On...

Our hope that the Jack Hammers were finally done with their massive landscaping project were dashed this week when Jack started in with his favorite landscaping tool again.

We thought at first that the noise was coming from some neighbors across the street who are using a power washer to strip their front wall before refinishing it, but we soon realized that the loudest noise was not coming from their house, but from across the canyon.

It's kind of funny, I guess, because Greg had to use a jackhammer to shape the hillside before he could complete our new retaining wall, and lately he's been using a chop saw to cut boards for the new raised beds going in behind the garage.  I guess Jack just couldn't stand hearing all that noise without contributing to it.  It reminds me of a visit to the zoo years ago; lions in two different enclosures started a roaring competition back and forth across the wall to see who could roar the loudest.

It looks like it's going to be another long, noisy summer.

Everything's Coming Up Roses...

Ole

Spring and the roses are popping out all over in Cindy's small rose garden.  The Ole rose is at its most brilliant right now.  We love the deep red color of this rose.  It's a joy to sit on the front porch in the evening, finishing our wine and seeing all the beautiful roses.

At least that's what I see.  Cindy, like most avid gardeners, tends to see the spots of rust, the scale, the advancing armies of aphids, the occasional weed that has had the temerity to creep into the bed....

More Ole

I'm learning that gardeners can't just sit and enjoy their gardens; they're always running through the mental "to do" list and sometimes they can't resist jumping up and grabbing that weed.

The rest of the roses are coming along, too.  The Moonstones with their delicate pink rims have started to flower, but the yellow roses haven't really got going yet.  Every year Cindy threatens to tear out one of the yellow roses, but relents when it starts flowering.

The real hit of the neighborhood, however, is the Double Delight rose.  That rose is the most aromatic of the roses we have and many mornings we've seen a mother and daughter stopping to smell our Double Delights.  They're beautiful roses with a lovely scent--a true double delight.

Double Delight

Double or Nothing

When I got back from the Land Where Time Stands Still (Medford), on Wednesday night, I noticed the glow of a strange bluish light from the garage.  I'm sure the neighbors think we're harboring space aliens or growing illegal weeds for recreational use, but the truth is that it's the beginning of tomato season and Cindy has tomato, basil and parsley seedlings sprouting in there under grow lights.

She tried starting them in the house years ago, but the cats took way too much interest in the pots of dirt, so now she starts them on a heated mat under grow lights in the garage where the cats can't get at them.

I mention all this pampering because a friend of ours told Cindy recently that her own tomatoes hadn't amounted to much last year.  Cindy heroically bit her tongue and refrained from reminding the friend that she had been given some of Cindy's pampered, hand-fed tomato seedlings last year and, in a fit of total brain-lock, had decided she would have twice as many tomato plants if she cut the tops off and tried to root them.  Needless to say, that experiment did not turn out well for the tomatoes--instead of double the plants, the result was pretty much... nothing.

Rainy Day

I was watching TV last night when all four of the cats who were downstairs with me suddenly went on alert.  I hate it when they do that; I never know whether they've actually heard some threatening noise or they're just messing with my mind.  "Gotcha again, human.  Yuk, yuk, yuk."  (sound of cats laughing)  They will react to lizards but ignore coyotes in the back yard, so you never really know what's up.

But when I looked outside I saw that it was raining!  Not very hard, just a gentle, soft, steady rain that apparently continued throughout the night.  The sound the cats were reacting to must have been the rain water starting to trickle through our rain harvesting system.

This rain comes at a very good time because it will probably ensure that the plants will stay alive until Cindy gets home on Thursday.  I turned the irrigation system for the rose garden on the other day and discovered the next morning that the timer had evidently not turned off and water was running down the driveway, so I turned it back off.  So this rain will help keep everything alive.

It's amazing how excited we can get over an unexpected rainy day in San Diego.

"Oh, Oh, Oh, Stayin' Alive, Stayin' Alive?"

That's the song I keep singing to our plants --at least I hope they're staying alive.  Cindy is visiting family in the midwest, so I'm in charge of keeping everything alive while she's gone.  She won't be too pleased if everything dies while she's gone.

We had a big rain a week ago, so the ground is still pretty damp, but some of the potted plants have needed a little water.  Fortunately, she has almost everything else automated, so it's not too hard to keep it going.  She planted some wildflower seeds in one of the beds in the back yard, but I think the birds and the squirrels got most of those shortly after she planted them.  Oooooh, seed buffet, yummy!

There's still no sign of anything coming up in the pots where Cindy planted the mystery nuts she found in the corner of the raised bed.  That was kind of a long shot, anyway, so we lose nothing if they don't come up, but then we'll never know what kind of nuts they were.

I know she'll get serious about planting things, starting tomatoes in the garage when she gets back and turning under the cover crop she planted a couple of months ago.  Those plants are about three feet high now and the sweet peas among them are really pretty.

Other Butterflies

We've had other butterflies besides the Monarchs visit our yard recently.  One day I startled our landscaper by shouting when I saw a Gulf Fritillary in the back yard.  It flew off into the canyon before I could get my camera.

We've also had quite a few Cabbage Whites visit our plants.  They move so fast I haven't been able to get a picture of them, either.

Mourning Cloak

Then one day we saw a Mourning Cloak in the back yard.  This is a gorgeous butterfly, with its cream colored edging and row of blue or purple dots around the deep chocolate wings.  I wish we had been able to see more of this beautiful butterfly before it took off, but we were glad  that we got a chance to see it when we did.