Spring in the Garden

Spring has sprung . . . and I am anxious to get going on my garden!

My raised bed "kinda square foot" garden!  The pots of mint and the rose will not
be staying up there once I get the garden planted . . . they will find new homes!

Have you heard that nervous tapping?  That was no woodpecker, my friend . . . that was my fingers impatiently tapping on the table . . .  

Fava bean sprouts

I have started a few trays of seeds, but they are getting a bit old and are not germinating like they should.  But, those that are coming up are looking good!  I took these pics a couple of weeks ago - you should see them now!  I'd show you, but it is pouring down rain out there right now and I'm not about to leave my nice snug spot right now!  ;)  The rain was coming down almost sideways just a little while ago and it is COLD out there!

My lilacs are starting to bloom!  :)

The tomatoes and lettuce are either not going to come up or are just taking their sweet time to make their grand entrance!  Same with the leeks . . .  I will try to plant a few more, just in case!  I want to have staggered plantings of the leeks anyway to be have a longer harvest.  But, I'm going to have tomatoes coming out of my ears if all my plants take off!  I ended up at the Fullerton Arboretum tomato sale last weekend and went a little overboard!  It was pouring rain last weekend as well, and a couple of the tomato plants I picked up were looking pretty ragged.  They all came out of it except one.  I am pretty sure it is a goner, but I haven't totally given up on it.  This rain is going to probably do it in, though . . . we'll see!  I have protected it as much as I can!

Garden visitor . . . I found him after watering and his poor little
wings had gotten saturated.   I put him in the sun to dry out!

But, the fava beans, cocozelle squash and sweet peas are going good and one lone Charentais melon is peeping out.  The favas are about 5 inches high already.  I would love to get them in the garden, but those darn pesky roly-polys would eat them right up.

My poor asparagus is under attack by the dreaded roly-polys!  The stalk
coming up in the center of the pic is now just a hollowed out stump.  :(

Well, more accurately, they would eat a ring around the base of the plant and kill it as they are doing to my asparagus.  I don't think the rhubarb is going to come back and the asparagus is struggling, so I don't hold out much hope for it either . . . but, maybe it will surprise me!  I will be picking up some diatomaceous earth this week in the hopes of deterring those darn pests!  They are absolutely driving me crazy! ! !  I know some of my family and friends would tell you that is a very short drive anyway!  ;)

Another welcome visitor patrolling the parsley!

I need to get a few more trays of seeds ready, and since I will be on a normal person's schedule next week, maybe I can get that done one night after work!  :)  

I nearly killed my poor little orange tree . . . but as you can see . . .
she's recovering!  She likes the new soil MUCH better! ! !  :)

I'm thinking I will forgo pumpkins this year, but am anxious to get the sweet potatoes and sweet dumpling squash my sister sent me planted.  They were absolutely the BEST sweet potatoes and squash I have ever tasted, so I am very much hoping I will have success with them!  I have had the sweet potatoes in glasses of water and they have rooted and vined out.  I should have gotten them in the ground (my raised bed garden) already I think, but they are all still sitting in my kitchen window.  Perhaps I can get them in the ground this coming week as well!  :)

The cocozelle squash is coming along and if you look really, really
closely, you can see a Charentais melon just starting to peek out!

This "last average frost date" is a little confusing for me, since we don't get frosts! ! !  So, I am never quite sure I am planting these things at the right time!  I should start a gardening journal to keep track of what works and what doesn't around here!

Remember the baby picture of the fava beans from above?  This is just 2 weeks
later than the first pic!  Notice the sweet peas coming up behind them!

Ok, the rain stopped for a bit, so just for you, I grabbed my camera and coat and dashed out to get a couple updated pics of those favas and squash.  Aren't they cute! ! !  If you look really closely, you can see a little Charentais melon peeping shyly out at you two photos above!  Shhhhhh . . . don't scare her!  Oh, my!  One thing about these close ups . . . you can see all the pesky things you hadn't noticed while snapping the pic!  Do you see them?  ** Quelle horreur! ** Aphids on my favas! ! !   Not to worry, I just ran back out there and took care of them!  Where are those lovely little lady bugs when you need them? ? ?   Phew, and not a moment too soon . . . it is pouring again!

One of my tiny blueberry bushes is coming on strong!
I'll be really happy once they get really established!

Maybe I'll be able to make some blueberry muffins one of these days from my own little blueberry bushes!  But, in the meantime . . .  it's cold and rainy out there.  It's time to bake!

So, I think it is the perfect time to bake up that Wild Huckleberry Muffin Mix I picked up on my last trip to Bryce Canyon.  Cold rainy days are perfect for baking! ! !  Come on, tuck your feet up and I'll get you a fresh one as soon as they're ready!  Coffee or tea to go with that?  Or, perhaps a hot cocoa?  ;)  See you soon!

Snow, Lunch and Welcome!

We have snow in our back yards, too!  This is a vintage
photo I took several years ago - since the clouds robbed
me of a good view of them for this post!  Sorry for the
washed out quality!  It was just too faded to get all
the richness of color back in it!  But, I did try!

First of all, I would really like to welcome and thank Rosemary over at The Summer Porch for stopping by for a visit and for following my blog!  I scooted over to take a peak at her "Porch" and just loved her photos and blog and quickly signed up as one of her followers.  It looks like we both started our blogs right about the same time!  I know I am looking forward to having a glass of lemonade or sun tea while spending a little more time on her porch and hope you will take a moment to visit with her also!

Secondly, I would like my dear cuz to see that we, too, have snow here in our back yards.  (She was kind enough to share her snow pics from her little 9 acre farm.)  This is just to the north of us.  See the tops of the mountains?  They are being a tiny bit shy and are trying to hide behind all those clouds.  Go ahead, look a little closer.  Ignore all that green stuff in front.  Just there, right above the clouds.  See them?  You can just barely see the very tippy-tops of the mountains and that they are blanketed in a nice thick layer of white, like a fluffy down comforter to snug them all in.  The snow report for our local mountains says they just got an additional 6" of powder on a 2' base.  Mammoth is showing an additional 2" on a 13' base (and they were all the way down to just a measly 11' base just a couple of days ago!).

Ok, here's another shot.  This time we are looking eastward, towards Idyllwild, hidden by the clouds up there at the top of the mountain (on the other side of these mountains, you will find Palm Springs).  Again, just ignore, and look behind, all that green stuff we have on the ground here (you know, you might remember them - grass and leaves and stuff?  :-).  Ju-u-u-ust above the green and ju-u-u-ust below the clouds.  See? The snow level came down very, very low!  Br-r-r-r-r-r-r!

One last shot.  This one is to the west, above the hills behind my friend's house where the clouds are trying to push their way over the hills at the end of the day.  She lives around Corona, and just a short 45 minute drive beyond these hills you will find my house.  The snow rarely falls on these hills, but they got some yesterday!  I know, it is rough, but somehow we manage to struggle through it!

I took these shots from near my friends house today (Sunday - but by the time I will actually get this posted, this should probably say yesterday!).  We have been trying to get together for lunch for the past few weeks, but things just kept getting in the way.  But, today, we finally were able to make it work.

Conventionally grown in the pinkish wrapper at
the top and the organically grown ones in the
whitish wrapper at the bottom!

I started the day with my weekly trip to the Farmer's Market.  The stand I always buy from seems to consistently have the best berries and I somehow was under the impression they were organically grown, but today after I had already purchased my basket I found out that they are conventionally grown.  So, I gathered up some strawberries we could do a taste test on.  I had just bought the conventionally grown berries, so I also searched out and bought a basket of organically grown berries.  I do not know which varieties they were, and I know that would have more to do with taste differences than organic versus conventionally grown, but . . .  I decided I would have my friend help decide which were actually better.  While they were both very, very good, the organically grown ones were unanimously chosen as the winners.  Unfortunately, they are not always available!  But, as long as they are, those will be the ones I purchase from now on!

Then we had mimosas by her pool, just relaxing, fanning ourselves (oops! what I meant was . . .) being fanned by her pool boys, and soaking up some of that lovely sunshine!  Just kidding, cuz . . . while the sun WAS out, it was actually way-y-y-y-y too cold for that!  We actually had to wear our heavy jackets while we took her sweet pooch for his constitutional before we left for our girls day out.  I think it must have been down in the low 50's, maybe even as low as the high 40's, but to us it felt like it was in the 30's!

Our first stop was the theater.  We went to see 127 Hours.  If you don't know anything about it, it is a movie based on a true story about a guy who goes hiking alone without telling anyone where he is going, and of course, disaster strikes.  He falls into a crevice, miles from anywhere/ anyone and out of site of anyone walking/flying around above, and ends up getting his arm pinned between a rock and the canyon wall and after several days and no hope of being rescued, all his water has been drunk and he begins drinking the only other liquid he has available, which he described as being "No slurpee", he frees himself by breaking the bones in his arm and then cutting his arm off.  This is exactly where being so squeamish can be detrimental to movie-going.  There were, needless to say, parts of the movie I could not watch.  


The movie shows the range of emotions he went through and the thoughts and hallucinations that were running through his mind throughout the ordeal.  He handled it with humor, videotaping messages and his goodbyes to his family and friends, with extreme frustration at times (who wouldn't? ? ?) and grace and a level-headed concentration on not losing it.  It really makes you think about the lengths one would go to stay alive.  Could you drink your own urine?  Could you cut your arm off to survive?  Could you do it without bleeding out?  He is a tough guy and is still out there hiking and even climbing, but apparently, he now always leaves a note as to exactly where he is heading!  It was very good and I am glad we went!  Just don't plan on going out for steak and Bloody Mary's afterwards!

My Australian Violets - just because they are
so cute and I love them, even though they are
desperately trying to take over my ENTIRE yard!

After the movie, we stopped back by her place to take Champ out for another little walk.  He is getting up there in years and has a very difficult time, so she has to take him out fairly frequently.  He is such a sweetheart, he is totally worth it!  But, it also gave us a little breather between the movie and lunch so I could get the movie firmly out of my mind before we headed out for our lunch.  

For everyone else, these may be called violas, but growing
 up, we called them violets, so they will forever be violets to me!
They are one of my favorite flowers because they look so sweet!

We had a nice long, leisurely lunch at Macaroni Grill.  But, since all I had eaten for the day prior to that was the strawberries, I was so-o-o hungry by the time we got to the restaurant, I forgot to snap a pic of our delicious lunches!  :-(  Sorry!  We started out splitting a Caesar Salad and snacking on the freshly baked rosemary bread dipped in olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  For my entree, I had the Fettucini Alfredo with a nice glass of Chateau St. Michelle Riesling.  It was just yummy!  My dear friend had the Pasta Milano and the Riesling also.  She says that is her absolute favorite dish there.  She likes it so much she can't quite make herself try anything else!  I know exactly what she means!  Once I find a favorite, I don't want to take a chance on anything else! 

It is like a little mini-vacation to be able to sit, relax, talk, laugh and catch up on all the events in each other's lives.  Good food, good drink and good company!  A day well spent!

So, back to my regular life, one of the things I am working on is this scarf.  I am trying to teach myself to knit from a book.  It is slow going and I am not nearly as comfortable with knitting needles as I am with a crochet hook, but I am hoping it will get easier as I do more of it!  I still can't tell what exactly constitutes a row by just looking at the work!  How lame is that?  :-)  It seems so much easier to identify and count rows in crochet!

Things I am "reading" are Sophie Kinsella's books: Twenties Girl, Remember Me? The Undomesticated Goddess and Can You Keep a Secret?.  Her books are the perfect antidote to stressful days!  My friend introduced me to her through her Shopaholic series.  Love, love, love them!  I would love to get the entire series on CD!  I absolutely love being read to!  I love books on tape (CD) for that reason!  At lunch, I can pop out my ipod and break out the knitting needles and sink back into my seat to be transported to another world for 45 minutes or so!  And, since Sophie usually gets me laughing out loud, I can go back to work feeling a little more refreshed and a bit more able to get through the second half of the day!  If you haven't read her yet, please do!  You'll be glad you did!  I promise!

If you want to test out whether you would like books on tape, you can listen to Miette's Bedtime Stories online for free.  She reads short stories and has rather an eclectic selection from which to choose.  If you have a favorite author, you can check out the listings she has on the right side of her page to see if she has "read" one of their stories and take a listen.


I am also working on a story for this "Dinner Party" game one of my epals told me about.  (Thanks, John!)  I'll share a bit more of that in a future post.  But, it is something that has held my interest for quite some time.  I have thought about it frequently and I am very anxious to do it up right and would like to share it with you someday!  I'm afraid I am going a bit overboard with it, but that is what is making it so much fun for me!

One of the other things I am working on is painting the inside of my house.  I tackle one room at a time.  This long holiday weekend, I am painting the bathroom.  Why does it always, always, always take so much longer than I think it will?  But, I have to admit, it is turning out to be so totally worth all the hard work!  I am really loving the way everything is beginning to look!  This project is long overdue!  I only have the living room, dining room, laundry area and all the closets to go!  Then I get to start decorating! ! !  Yayyyy!  One of these days, once I have everything done and all back in order, I may try to share some pics, but that is going to be way, way, way down the road yet!  I am sooooo slow!

While doing a little surfing, I happened to run across this article, and it piqued my curiosity, so I googled the Wagon Teamster's blog.  It is a fascinating read and I thought you might enjoy it, so I am sharing the link.

Before I go, since this post is a little short on pics, I thought I'd share a pic of the blossoms on the new peach tree I told you about in one of my previous posts.  Aren't they adorable!  I was surprised to see they have no scent!  At least, not that I can detect!  My mother has the nose of a bloodhound, so she might be able to detect something there, but I sure can't!  My lemon trees and orange tree are another matter.  The lemon trees are loaded with blossoms about to open, any day now!  Soon the air will be perfumed with their scent.  It is so intoxicating, I wish they had scratch and sniff screens so I could share it with you when they do finally open up!  It is so difficult for one pair of lungs to sniff up the whole thing alone!

And a shot of the grape hyacinths that have popped up in the last week or two.  The paperwhites have already come and gone without me documenting their existence this time around, but they'll be back! 

And finally, a shot of the orchid I bought a few weeks ago paired with a maidenhair fern.  I also recently purchased some air plants.  I still haven't decided what to do with them just yet, but will figure out something soon, I'm sure!

So, what are you working on, reading, creating?  Let me know!  See you next time!  TTFN!

The Garden I Didn't Plant

Wall at the Hotel Laguna

Let me start by saying I really meant well.  I was going to . . . .  Seems like I have a lot of things that start that way lately!  Well, as I was saying, I was going to finish the planters in the back for my raised garden this year, but . . . well, . . . so many things to do and not enough time for all my little projects . . . the bottom line is, I didn't get the planters done.  But, that didn't seem to stop my garden from growing anyway!

I have two gi-normous yellow pear tomato plants that are producing enough for me and 5 or 6 of my neighbors.  I have received notice from the authorities that I may have to register them as independent countries, they are taking up so much space.  :-)  I am now in the process of drying some of the tomatoes in my dehydrator to try to keep up with all of them.  Another battle I am losing.  They were volunteers that just kept popping up, I kept pulling them up, but finally I surrendered that battle and let a couple of them go.  My tomatoes always seem to get away from me and end up sprawling all over like they own the place.  There always seems to be a time where it goes from a nice plant to a monster plant over night.  Next time, I WILL not allow them to get out of control.  Next year, I am going to get the planters ready and get a real garden in and put a couple of pyramids in there to support and corral my tomatoes.  They will NOT take over my yard again!  :-)  Hee hee hee, famous last words . . . 

Anyway, I also ended up with about 3 or 4 basil plants that are now finishing up their blooming and are starting to go to seed and are making the birds and the bees around here very happy!  There are several . . . I believe they are finches . . . flocking around them, taking flight every time I step around the corner back there.  And I am very happy to see all the bees busily collecting all the nectar.  I think there must be 3 or 4 different types of bees back there all humming away!  Now, if they would just take away all the hundreds of baby basil plants that are trying to come up!  That's how these came into being.  I just got tired of trying to pull up all the plants coming up from the seeds from the plant I took out last year.  I let a few go ahead and grow!  But, now I sure have a lot of work to do in this garden I didn't plant!

There are also 2 or 3 poblano pepper plants in there.  More volunteers!  At least these didn't wear me out trying to pull up thousands of renegades!  They just happened to pop up at a time I was worn out pulling up all the others!  I harvested some of them last week and was going to make some chile rellenos.  I got as far as broiling them and peeling the skins, but then there they sat in the fridge, wasting away!  I had forgotten to pick up some of the necessary ingredients to make them, so I thought I would put them in the fridge until the next day when I could pick up a few things at the market on my way home from work.  That was a busy week, so I never got to the market, and therefore never got around to stuffing and finishing them!  :-(  I have actually never gotten around to trying my poblanos!  In the past they always ripened at a bad time for me to try to use them, so I ended up giving them all away!  Maybe next time I'll actually get around to eating them!  I got closer this time than I ever have before!  

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I noticed my dragon fruit cactus had a little bump on the end of one of it's arms.  I wasn't sure if it was the start of a little bloom or not, but the next weekend I could see there definitely was a baby bloom popping into existence!  The second week, it was the size of a large pea!  Yay! 

The third week, it was a little larger than a shooter marble.  (If you're under 30, or maybe even 40, you may not even know what that is!  I don't think kids play with marbles any more!)  

This week it is about 3 or 4 inches long.  I didn't think it would bloom this year, because I had to move the plant last year and ended up breaking off some of the long arms in the process.  Since you need mature arms to produce fruit, I wasn't expecting anything this year!  But, it would appear that I was wrong!

These are amazing plants.  A friend gave this one to me a couple of years ago.  It takes a couple of years for it to get big enough to start producing fruit.  The flower blooms only one night and it is huge! ! !  It is white and about the size of a plate!  The stamens are yellow and there are about a million of them!  I was lucky that mine bloomed for me last year.  I was so excited the day the bud looked like it was ready to bloom.  I kept going outside every hour that evening to make sure I didn't miss it!  I didn't have a tripod, so my pictures of it are not very good.  Maybe this time I'll be able to get pictures that I can share!  The middle looked so soft I couldn't resist sticking my finger in the middle of all those stamens.  I was surprised that a flower that large would not really have much of a scent!  At the end of the evening, it starts dying and eventually the fruit begins to form.  Last year, I got one fruit from it, but the ants got to it before I did!  I wasn't sure when to harvest it and while I waited, it cracked and the ants covered it trying to get at the sweet fruit inside!  It's flavor is kind of a cross between strawberry, pear and kiwi.  I think I will know when to pick it this year!  After all this, I don't want to end up feeding the ants again!

Lemons grown from a seed!

Meyer Lemons

Lime

The rest of my "crops" are tree fruits.  Those don't count as things I didn't plant!  Well, actually, the dragon fruit doesn't either!  My trees are all dwarf varieties and I have them in planters.  Lemon, Meyer lemon, lime, and orange trees.  The lemon tree is one I started from a seed I threw into a cup of water several years ago.  It sprouted, so I planted it and a tree began growing.  I was about to give up on it and give it away because I didn't think it would ever produce fruit, but one day I looked over and noticed a big yellow lemon on it!  I was completely astonished.  How I missed the flowers and the fruit growing I do not know!  It takes a long time to get from flower to ripe fruit and I hadn't noticed anything until that day!  It actually is the only tree I have that is not a dwarf variety and I am being very mean to it!  I have never repotted the poor thing.  It out grew it's little pot a few years ago and I am sure it must be root-bound by now and will be starting to die soon, but one of these days I will try to replant it anyway and hope for the best!  For a small tree, it has quite a bit of fruit on it!

Well, as long as I am talking about trees . . . I also have 5 plumerias.  Of course, these don't count as things I didn't plant this year either!  Hmmmmm . . .  seems I have managed to run a bit off course from the title of my post.  (Hopefully the title police won't notice.)  :-)  Now, what I am going to do with all these trees and a yard the size of a postage stamp I am not sure, but so far they are all small (ranging in size from approximately 4-6' tall) and in pots, so I am ok . . . for now.  I really like my plumerias.  They bloom forever.  I love picking a few blooms and putting them on my desk at work.  The white ones with the yellow centers are the most fragrant.  I went to a Hawaiian themed wedding last year and was able to make my own lei and bracelet for it.  The pinkish ones don't have much scent to them at all, but they are so pretty I really enjoy them!  

I didn't think the one with the pink flowers was going to make it.  A friend gave me a cutting from her tree and it took forever for it to put out leaves.  I started to notice little bumps at the end of the branches and I got hopeful they were little leaf buds.  After what seemed like an eternity, little leaves started to open up.  Yayyy!  And to my surprise, a little flower nodule also began to form.  I got flowers this first year! ! ! !   The trunk doesn't look all that great right now, so I am not sure if it will be around very long, but maybe it will surprise me again!  I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Well, getting back to the topic I started with, for a garden I didn't plant, I sure have a lot of work ahead of me to clean things up at the end of this season!  I was happy to have at least a few things from the garden to eat this year, but I would really like to get situated so that next year I can make sure to get a little more variety and a lot more control over this little tiny piece of land I call my garden!  

Until next time!  Happy gardening!