A New Hummingbird Nest

I can't believe my good fortune. Another hummingbird has built it's nest in the same tree as the last bird. This one has a more golden tone to it.

Working in the yard

The problem with working in the yard is the task tends to expand to fill the time. The more I did, the more I saw that needed doing. I swept and bagged leaves, pulled weeds, repotted plants, made 2 dish gardens, threw away junk, moved the workbench, tidied up the shelves, moved a bunch of gourds, and I still have enough work to fill another day. Thank goodness its getting dark because I'm pooped! It feels so good to shower when I am all muddy though.

Never turn your back on your squash

Kentucky Pole Beans, zucchini, summer squash and lemon cucumbers grown in Anaheim, CA 92804.

Twin squash.

I picked my first squash and the first one was twins. The striped ones are called Early Zuke.

So far so good

My garden finally looks like a garden. It's at the happy place after the seeds are growing but before it looks wild and weedy. I took more photos yesterday while it was sprinkling.

Tomatoes and Peppers oh my.

Last time I was at Home Depot buying plants, I thought I got 3 varieties of tomatoes. When I planted them, I found out I only got 2, because one had the wrong label on the shelf.
But I had seen some black tomatoes there and went to get one of those. I got a variety called Black Prince. My boyfriend grabbed him a Serrano Pepper plant. So today I got them planted, and grabbed the tags to make a blog post. Both tags had black plants on the photo, and I was pretty sure Serrano Peppers aren't black. So I read the fine print and what he had grabbed from the Serrano shelf was a Purple Bell Sweet Pepper. So learn from our mistake and check the tag right next to the stem, not the shelf label. And even so tags fall out and people stick them in any old plant, so I guess I will have to wait and see just what these tomatoes and peppers turn out to be.

Planting the garden

Today I got up at a quarter to 8 and got all my seedlings in the ground except the snapdragons. I'm out of space so those may have to go in the front yard and be at the mercy of the clowns that do the apt. complex gardening.

I meant to get three varieties of tomatoes but when I read the tags this morning I had two Big Boys and one Mr. Stripey. Oh well, I planted them anyway. I planted 6 yellow banana peppers, 2 lemon cucumbers, and and assortment of sunflower seeds.

This year I'm working smart and not hard and covering between rows with black plastic to keep the weeds down and conserve moisture. After an hour and a half of gardening this morning I was pretty much melted and hungry for breakfast. It doesn't take long for that CA sun to heat things up.

I still have to lay out another row of plastic and put up strings for the beans to climb on, but that can wait for another day.

King Corn

I got some seedlings to plant in my garden tomorrow. I got several varieties of tomatoes, peppers, and lemon cucumbers. Also some snapdragons to add color. Plus I want to plant some sunflowers from seeds. Plants don't last long in flats so I'm getting up early to plant them all. One of them already wilted between the time I got home and the time the sun went down.
A volunteer seed is sprouting with the squash. It's either a bean or a sunflower. I'm tempted to let it grow and see what it is.
After seeing a PBS special called King Corn tonight, I'm more determined than ever to eat less processed food and eat more home grown foodstuffs. Between corn fed cows and high fructose corn syrup in so many processed foods, it sure looks like corn is a contributing factor to diabetes and obesity. Almost all the corn grown in the U.S. either goes to feed livestock or to make high fructose corn syrup to sweeten packaged foods. Almost all the fast food in a typical meal is corn. Corn fed beef, corn oil french fries and corn syrup in the soda. Think about it...if they feed cows corn to make them fat, then we shouldn't really be surprised if all the corn in our diets is making humans fat. We just can't handle that much starch and sugar. I'm not talking about sweet corn from a farmer's market. I'm talking about altered corn that tastes so bad you can't even eat it raw. It has to be chemically processed before we can even eat it. And cows fed too long on that corn mixture die after about 6 months.
I had to laugh in a sad and painful way when they said they fatten cows by confining them to pens so they can't move and then stuff them full of corn. I sit in my apt. where I can hardly move and stuff my face all day with corn. As one farmer put it, "I know we are growing crap. It's what they (the govt.) pay us to do. Americans want cheap food."

Yellow Rose

First bloom of the year on my St. Patrick's Day rose, and I almost missed it because I was out of town camping. We had a heatwave so I got home at the peak of it's bloom.

Sprouting and hummingbird nest.

I'm happy to say the squash sprouted in 7 days, and now the beans are coming in. I get so excited just knowing the seeds are still viable.
And a hummingbird built a nest right outside my bedroom window.

Beans and Squash...I sound like a Puritan

Today I got the vegetable garden offically started. I planted Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans because they did so well last year. And I planted 3 kinds of squash. Now that we are doing weekly stir fries, I'll be able to use a lot more squash. When I get back from my camping trip next weekend I'll get some tomato plants to put in. And this year I'm putting plastic over all the bare earth so I don't have to waste so much time on pulling weeds and grass. Ick I hate that! So cross your fingers and soon I'll have beans and squash sprouting. I love to watch things sprout.

My roses are blooming.

My striped roses just started blooming. It's going to be prolific this year. My St. Patrick's Day rose also has buds on it. None so far on my sterling rose, but I pruned it late in the season to get rid of the jasmine all tangled up in it. I'm sure it will make a comeback. It's very sturdy.

Wasp

I'm going to start the garden this weekend I hope so I was out clearing old dead vines away.
I was out in the back and happened to glance up in time to see a wasp making a nest under the balcony. The nest was about the size of a pea. Reminds me of one I saw in SLO that was the size of a person's head. So I sprayed it with bug spray, which made for one angry wasp. After it flew off, I scraped down the nest.

The one in the photo was spotted in San Luis Obispo last weekend about 3 stories up. You might have to open the larger photo to see it. Some pigeons actually live above it.

Save the roses

I had lost one of my roses underneath a jasmine vine, a lantana vine and an overly zealous miniature rose bush with evil thorns. I trimmed and pruned and swore until I got all the parasites off the main plant. So now it has a good chance to make strong new branches for spring. I'm slowly reclaiming the back yard.

Calla Lily

When I have no roses to photograph,it gives me a chance to take photos of other flowers in the yard. These calla lillies grow in front the apts. I didn't plant them but I sure enjoy them when they bloom. I particularly like that you can see the pollen on the stamen.

It's almost Spring

Yesterday I decided to start getting my backyard/patio ready for the spring garden. I'm so glad I did because the rain had made a real mess of things. One of my gourd buckets was full of water and the gourds were waterlogged. So I set them out to dry. I hope they'll be okay.

Then today I swept up a ton of fallen leaves, berries, and wood shavings from my bf's bowmaking projects. I think he's thinking all those shavings can just be shoved into the garden, but that just doesn't work out. I don't have the space for a compost pile so all the shavings do is litter the garden and the patio. My 'yard' is only about 15' wide but really long. And most of it is concrete.

The other problem is the apt. dumpster is at the end of my yard in it's own brick enclosure, so when people miss the dumpster it lands in my garden. And I swear some people miss on purpose. The problem increased when the new neighbors moved upstairs. What does that tell you? Stuff from their patio is always blowing off into our yard. One day I came home to find a burning towel in my garden. They said it was their towel but had no idea how it caught on fire.

Most of the annuals I planted years ago bit it during the cold days this winter. So I have to dig all those out and plant something new. I have a volunteer ornamental asparagus growing by my water spigot which is actually doing quite nicely. My coleus all died in the last cold snap. I lost a few herbs too. I have tons of tomato plants left, but I need to get rid of most of them or I'll end up with an all tomato garden again. The beans did really well and I saved the seeds, so maybe I'll plant those again as soon as it is warm enough.

It's a jungle out there.

My problem has never been getting things to grow. It's keeping them from taking over the neighborhood. Today I had to go out and pull my gourd vine back over from my neighbor's side of the brick wall. What I thought was a wee piece of vine on the wrong side turned out to be about 12 feet long. Then I had to trim the jasmine vine off of the roses and the lantana out of the jasmine. And my 'miniature rose' is now 6' tall and tangled with another rose. It's like the thorny rose from hell so I cut that back quite a bit as well.

Note that I didn't plant any gourds this year or last, they just keep growing up by themselves. As we are midway into Oct. my striped rosebush is blooming it's head off again.

Weeds Be Gone

My weeds were ruining my life so I bought a weed whip. Today I got to learn how to use it as an edger and reclaim my patio. The concrete part was getting smaller and smaller, which annoyed my boyfriend greatly. So I used the edger and hopefully he'll be a happier man now. I still have a lot more to do, but I am limiting myself to 10 minutes a day so I don't injure my back again.

Time to plant the new garden

I'm going to be putting in this year's vegetable garden really soon before it gets too bloody hot. Right now I'm thinking onions, chives, zucchini, and cilantro. Some of the tomatoes that I didn't dig up made it through the winter and are already covered in blossoms. Go tomatoes go!

The Tomatoes are Winning

I just tackled my weed-ridden bug-infested garden. It's been too hot to pick the tomatoes for over a week, so I had to take advantage of the cool morning and just get out there and do it. I quickly became hot, sweaty and itchy so I went back inside to beg my boyfriend to help me. While I picked and handed them off to him, he put the good ones in a bowl and the buggy ones in the trash. We filled 2 large bowls. I also pulled weeds as I went. Finally, I couldn't see any more red blobs, so I ran for the shower. There is something about tomato plants that makes me itch like crazy. And the weedy grass is going to seed and those awful pods stick to all fabrics and break into tiny bits so you can't get them off, not even in a the washer. Anyway we filled 2 giant bowls with regular and cherry tomatoes. So later this afternoon I'll be making spaghetti sauce out of at least half of them.