"Get In The Bucket, John!"

Cindy and I attended a presentation of "Celebrate Trees--An Evening With Naturalist John Muir" at the Balboa Theater in Balboa Park last night, presented by the Center For Sustainable Energy.

Doug Hulmes, a professor of environmental studies at Prescott College in Arizona, has studied John Muir extensively and performs an evening of storytelling and conversation as John Muir to promote environmental education and consciousness of the importance of urban forestry.

One of the stories he told in the personification of Muir was the story of the young Muir digging a 90 foot deep well on the family homestead in rural Wisconsin.  He had to dig the first thirty feet of the well through close grained sandstone using a hammer and chisel.  As the well progressed, his father would lower him in a bucket using a windlass.  One day when the well was nearing completion, his father lowered John into the well as usual, not realizing that carbonic acid gas (carbon dioxide) had collected at the bottom of the well during the night.  Muir had become so accustomed to being in the well that he did not recognize the danger and was soon overcome by the gas and unable to take effective action, but when his father realized that he wasn't hearing any sounds of digging or chipping, he began yelling, "Get in the bucket, John!" and pulled him to safety.

Would John Muir think that our society is now in danger of being overcome by poisons and unable to make intelligent decisions to get out of the mess?

O.K., that was a rhetorical question if there ever was one.

Anyway, it was a pleasant and entertaining evening.  And I think we could use a few more people with the eloquence and foresight of John Muir.

"A Gardener's Work Is Never Done..."

More Tomatoes?

At least in the San Diego climate, a gardener's work is never finished, because there's always something growing that needs attention, or planting, or fertilizing, or pruning, or... fill in the blank.

That's the down side to not having snow here; the gardener can't look out the window, sigh and say, "Well, I can't do anything out in the garden today" and go back to doing other things.

The current problem is that it's almost time for Cindy to start new tomato plants growing under the grow lights in the garage, but last year's tomato plants are still going strong.  The vines are looking a bit bedraggled, but they're tall, bushy and still producing tomatoes and tomato blossoms.  She picked nine ripe tomatoes this morning, about the same number yesterday, and there are at least triple that number still on the vine.

I guess it's a nice problem to have; we have fresh tomatoes, and we don't have to shovel snow.

Can Of Worms

Can of Worms

Several years ago one of Cindy's Master Gardener friends sent out an SOS for somebody to take some of her red worms; they had reproduced so prolifically that she was running out of room for them in her bin.

So Cindy got into the process of worm farming.  We bought a bin cleverly titled "Can 'O Worms", put the appropriate amount of bedding and the worms in, and left them to it.

Cindy adds kitchen scraps and clean bedding for them from time to time and drains off the resulting "worm tea", which makes a wonderful fertilizer for her plants.  

We're occasionally had to cover the bin in cold weather or move it into the garage when a lot of rain was forecast.  Other than that, though, the worms don't require much care or attention.

Apparently today's sports page has now become part of the worms' bedding; she informed me that if I wanted it, I'd have to check the worm bin before they began eating it.  (She thinks I watch too much football.)

I said I didn't think it was a good idea to feed them the sports page--it might make them choke, like both the Chargers and the Padres did last year.

CONGRATULATIONS U of O DUCKS!  Ninety five years since they last won the Rose Bowl.

Really?  Too much football?  Me?

Still With Us...

Well, I saw a big, fat ground squirrel in the back yard under the bird feeder yesterday, so either he's not the varmint who stole the False Sea Onion bulb the other day, or, scary thought, he's immune to toxic plants.

We'll have to find a way to keep him out of the potatoes Cindy has just planted.

"How Do You Know It's Winter?"

What's All This White Stuff On My Windshield?

Cindy's folks came from Indiana to visit us in San Diego one November years ago, and while they were here we mentioned something about winter coming on.  Looking at the sunny San Diego sky, Cindy's Mom asked us, "How do you know it's winter here?"

That stumped us for a bit and we finally mumbled something about wearing long pants when we play golf and closing most of the windows at night.

So I just had to post this photo Cindy took of me scraping snow off the car two weeks ago when we were back in Indiana.

There was no snow on Christmas Day itself, but the family had decided to celebrate on the 27th to allow family members to gather, and that morning we woke up to more snow; big fat flakes covering everything.  It was like being inside a snow globe.

A White (Second) Christmas

It was lovely to visit, but we still think it's better to "let it snow, let it snow, let it snow... somewhere else".

Ha! We WinThis Round!

Our Blueberries!

We decided to save our New Year's Day champagne until today so we could drink it while we watched the Rose Parade.

So Cindy went out and gathered the ripe blueberries off the vines to put them in the champagne.

There were only four of them, but they were big, sweet, juicy, and, best of all--we beat the squirrel to them!  That's what you get for hibernating, varmint.

So we win this round.

New Year's Day 2012: The Varmint Wars Begin...

Cindy looked out the back window this morning and discovered that some critter had spent the night digging industriously in the planter bed beside the garage and had kicked dirt all over the top of the wall.

When she went out to inspect, she discovered that the varmint had made off with a False Sea Onion (Ornithogalum caudatum) bulb from one of the pots.  The bulb had cast several bulblets and those were still there, but the center bulb was gone.

Too bad for the varmint that most parts of these plants are considered highly toxic.  Seems kind of a shame after all the work that critter did to drag that big bulb off.

I guess we'll know if it survived if it goes after any of the others.