End of An Era

Cindy's dad, Louis Dehmlow, grew up on a dairy farm in Illinois and remained a passionate gardener the rest of his life.  It seemed like he could make anything grow.  We lost him at the end of February, a week short of his 90th birthday.  Indiana was still covered with snow and tomatoes were only a distant dream of summer.

Lou was very proud of his flourishing upside down tomato plant a few years ago, especially when he heard that Master Gardener Cindy's upside down tomato was a scrawny specimen that managed to produce only one (1) tomato the entire summer.

He never let her hear the end of that one, but he took great delight in helping her install a drip irrigation system for his roses when his back problems prevented him from hand carrying water to them during Indiana's drought; it turned out that all the bits and pieces of a drip system was almost like a tinker toy set for an engineer like Lou.

He was an inventive, funny, wonderful man who cared deeply about his family and his garden, and we will all miss him greatly.

Tools Of The Trade

Garden Tools

Several years ago, Cindy's Dad gave her a set of miniature garden tools that had been carved by his grandfather, William M. Schuette.

William Schuette was employed as a grinder in a bolt factory, but his real passion was wood carving.

Some of his folk art carvings included sets of wooden apples, oranges and bananas, a parrot lamp, and a chandelier consisting of wooden Holstein cows.  

I would love to have seen the cow chandelier, but we don't know where it is; if it still exists, it's probably sitting in a box in somebody's basement in Illinois.

However, I know Cindy will always treasure these tools, not only for the family connection, but for their association with her own passion for gardening.

Tomatoes Up!

The tomatoes under the grow lights in Cindy's office are up and look to me like they are thriving.  That's a good thing, and I hope that continues because they're my responsibility while she's in Indiana.  

Tomatoes

This year's varieties are Champion II, Husky Cherry, Sweet Seedless, Stupice, First Prize, Ace, Sioux, Brandywine and Boxcar Willie.  

She's also raising some root stock and planning to graft the Boxcar Willie on to it, hoping to avoid the fusarium wilt problems that plant had last year.  

Looks like we should have plenty of tomatoes again this year.  

T-Bone

We were out in our front yard recently and saw a crow in the street dragging a steak bone that it had evidently just scavenged from somebody's trash bin.  That wasn't too surprising; these intelligent, raucous birds have taken up residence in the Eucalyptus trees in the neighborhood and never seem to stop squabbling among themselves and terrorizing other birds.  They're sort of Hell's Angels with feathers.

As we watched, the crow finally got control of the bone and flew with it up onto the roof of our neighbors' garage, where it did its little crow happy dance and kept a lookout for other crows who might steal it away as it continued to peck at the bone for a while.

We had forgotten all about that until yesterday, when we were sitting out on the front porch and spotted a strange object on their garage roof looking like, yes, a t-bone.

I suppose some day we should tell the neighbors that they have a steak bone on their garage roof.

Red-backed Jumping Spider

Redbacked Jumping Spider

Cindy found this interesting looking spider in the garden recently; it turned out to be a Red-backed Jumping Spider, Phiddippus johnsoni.

The spider looked like a miniature version of a tarantula, but its iridescent teal colored chelicerae (mouth parts) and velvety red abdomen were very beautiful.

The bite of these spiders is reported to be painful, but not poisonous to humans.  Fortunately for us, it was pretty shy and kept trying to hide from us and showed no inclination to try to jump at us.

More pictures of Phiddippus johnsoni at:  http://kaweahoaks.com/html/spi_phidippus_johnsoni.html

Seventy PerCent Chance?

Rain?  From These Clouds?

The forecast was for a 70 per cent chance of rain today, but I'm not thinking that looks very likely.

Actually, in San Diego, that kind of prediction just means that IF you wash your car, AND wash all your windows, it might sprinkle enough to get them all spotted up again.

Recently, one of my favorite groups, The Irish Cloud Appreciation Society, posted a link to a wonderful article about the eleven different levels of Irish rain:  http://thedailyedge.thejournal.ie/irish-rain-scale-1275040-Jan2014/.

When we do get some rain, it only goes up to Level 3, "wetting rain", on the Irish Rain Scale, although the local San Diego television weather people start talking about the current "storm".  We certainly never get up to Level 7, "bucketing", let alone "pelting" or "lashing" rain; we wouldn't know what to do in that much rain.

Let's hope we get some rain from this "storm" anyway, because we really do need it.

Spring Seminar

The Master Gardener Association of San Diego is presenting their Spring Seminar March 22 this year, and once again the presentations look like they will be both informative and fun.  The classes and registration form can be found at:   http://www.mastergardenerssandiego.org/seminar/.

I'm particularly looking forward to Billy Goodnick's presentation of Crimes Against Horticulture: When Bad Taste Meets Power Tools.  If you can't make it to the seminar, check out Billy's website at http://billygoodnick.com/crimes-against-horticulture-when-bad-taste-meets-power-tools-2/.