shoveldowsing

last summer we found a water leak in a buried line supplying outside faucets. the supply line for these faucets branches off the main pipe to the house, so turning off the water to stop the leak also stopped water from getting to the house. divining where the pipe might go i dug up the next in line outside faucet and found the other end of the leaky pipe. alas, i had to cut the pipe to cap it so we could have water in the house. i should add that the leak was in a copper fitting. when someone put in the outside faucets and ran a line under where a driveway would go, they changed from pvc to copper. i don't fix copper without an air pressure test because it is very hard to fix a leak after there has been water in the line. a lesson learned the hard way. so i needed to be able to turn off the outside water system and still have water to the house. and to do that i had to locate a buried pvc pipe. i had a place to start where i dug enuf to find the pipe next to an outlet. i could see the direction the pipe headed. so i dug a bit further. uh oh. it's curving.
 
the white things are bits of pvc pipe showing the arc of the buried pipe, determined by digging holes where i guessed i would find it. i installed a valve, repaired the copper line, tested it, and restored water to our outside faucets.

garden improvement

the previous owners here had a vegetable/flower garden. a twenty by twenty foot fenced square with a nice sliding gate, two raised beds, some plants in the ground, and a plastic tub with strawberry plants. there were also two raised beds outside the fence with screened sides and tops. we called it the boutique garden. it was pretty. it was way overbuilt. it was in the best spot they had for sun, which wasn't very good at all. okay for midsummer, but right up against big trees to the south.

we cleared some trees east of the house for our garden. lots more sun. i began dismantling the boutique garden last summer. the fence is gone. the two raised beds from inside the fence are now in our garden full of growing garlic and onions. here is a picture of one of those beds being delivered to its new site. sideways in the trailer.

today we moved one of the raised beds from outside the fenced boutique garden. these beds, with screened covers, won't fit in the trailer upright, i made a plywood platform for them so i don't have to cut the uprights. since the plan is for these two beds to have sunsrceen mesh on the roof so we can grow chard and broccoli and such here in the summer, i want to keep the roof structure.

here is how we moved the second bed. the first was a learning experience. not as neat.

here is my jury-rigged jack. the plan is to raise the bed enough for the 2x6 crosspiece to rest on the sawhorses.

here is the thing with the trailer under it.


ready to unload at its new location.

 both new beds in place. strawberries in the foreground. more about them later.

!!!BONUS VIDEO!!!

birthday garden

we have been looking back at our posts last year to see garden pictures so it seemed appropriate to post garden pictures on my birthday.

our best onion crop ever! we have 25 or so of these. this is the biggest of course.

the comparison to last year pic. taken from there looking here.

if only i had stopped five feet back dropping this in place would have been easier. it is one of the raised beds from the garden that came with the house. now we just need to fill it.

it has been a wonderful birthday. we got out early to take our long walk. several relatives left stylish singing renderings of "happy birthday" while we were out. my marvelous hippie wife made a delicious breakfast. we purchased salmon AND scallops to satisfy my fish jones and the garden has provided squash, eggplant, onion and garlic (never tried to grill it before). all to be bbq'd.

much more importantly.... thanks to all my friends, met and unmet, for such nice thoughts on the occasion of my entering my 70th year.

garden

we've been enjoying the evenings after dinner sitting out on our deck overlooking the garden. it occurred to me to list all the varieties we have growing. i was amazed.
basil
beet
chive
corn
eggplant
garlic soft neck
garlic hard neck
lettuce
melon cantaloupe
melon water
onion
oregano
peas
pole beans
potatoes
red bell peppers
rosemary
strawberry
summer squash straight neck yellow
summer squash zucchini
tomato brandywine
tomato roma
tomato purple cherokee
tomato cherry
wax beans
winter squash butternut
winter squash acorn

the garlic has been harvested and is drying. we had a dozen each of cauliflower and broccoli too but they don't do well in hot weather. we ate broccoli with 3 meals and cauliflower with none as it was bolting. so we removed both.

garlic was here. the other bed has chives, lettuce, onions and flowers.

tomato cages, beans, potatoes, peas, summer squash

bawk bawk bawk

we have a chicken project going on too. fencing and a coop. i do a little better than brassicas in hot weather but even so i start at 7 or 7:30 and knock off by 10:30 when the sun gets high and hot enough to bake bread.

cover crop and good neighbor

we did a cover crop this year in our vegetable growing beds. our local garden place has a wide variety of cover crops (and seeds galore and tools and books and much more. we like it). we chose a soil building mix of legumes: fava beans, biomaster peas, yellow peas, and sugar snap peas. an edible crop that fixes nitrogen and send roots deep.

april 13

april 21
barely visible behind the closest
  row of cover crop is the next
bed with teeny broccoli and cauliflower starts

fava bean flowers

pea flowers 

we decided to remove the fence around the little garden that came with the place. it was built in a very shaded location, so we will move the nice redwood raised beds out into the sunlight. i took off the wire fencing. seventeen posts. at least twenty five fence staples in each. then i discovered that all seventeen were set in two feet of concrete. i dug down halfway around four gobs of concrete on four posts and exhausted myself breaking the concrete off two. i was resigned to renting a jackhammer to salvage the posts.

we mentioned the post problem to a neighbor a week or so ago. this morning he drove over in his nice mid size kubota tractor and volunteered to see if it would pull up the posts. short answer…no. he did get the two posts i had dug around up out of the ground, still in their large   concrete boots.

it was a very nice gesture. we had a laugh about overdone concrete.

garden

aren't these awesome?

is this as tall as an elephant's eye?

our hopscotch relo from port townsend to grass valley, via arcata and santa cruz, meant that we missed 3 years of gardening. we have a grand garden this year and we are relearning several things. like; don't plant too close, how many tomatoes can we eat and freeze or dry, how many basil plants can we use, and again… how much room does a pepper plant need?



not to complain tho. we have chard, kale, string beans, zucchini, tomatoes of several sorts, onions, lotsa basil, carrots, yellow summer squash, delicata squash, butternut squash, watermelons, cantaloupes, tomatillos, beets, potatoes, corn, peas, chives, and something i've forgotten for sure. (it was the red peppers)



we do have the usual difficulty with wanting to eat everything our plants give us. there is no way to grow just enough. that's what the compost pile is for.



and next year....... chickens!

We've Been Quiet For A Week...

....in a good way. Life is full and rich and crazy. Summer burst upon the scene like a hot hypnotist. Everything rises by silent seasonal instruction, "when the temperature reaches 80F, you will send out flowers and shoots, you will produce tendrils that climb the strings, you will turn a strawberry red."
Heatwave, we're having a heatwave. Not only that but we are in the midst of dragonfly season and the season of squirrels lying flat on their bellies in the shade. One day there was a cocoon by the front-yard hose,
and then there was a Ctenucha Rubroscapa come out for its first time in the sun.

I once saw an orange-headed lizard on the road. It ducked so fast Roger missed it. Maybe I imagined it. That could happen, right? But I looked out the door on Sunday, just before I pulled down the blinds on the 95F western side of the house and saw this guy.
What? An orange-headed thing. I remember googling that the first time. It's a skink. Yes, a Gilbert's Skink. Wikipedia says they're mostly not out and about. This one ran under the frame of the door. They like to hide. Ain't that the truth. I can totally relate.

last harvest

we had the best tomato plant ever. for us anyway. we planted it in one of our boutique garden cages that came with the place. rain was forecast for today so i harvested all the tomatoes and put the vine in the compost. that's a red pepper visible up there. alas, the bugs got it.

these are now a memory, having been eaten or quartered and frozen.

the last harvest, ripening in the window.

in other news from chez bums i am doing well with the second round of chemo. no rash, but a few mouth sores, more annoying than painful. spicy food burns a bit going down my throat. and i sometimes feel very fuzzy mentally. more than usual. i napped today covered by my wonderful quilt. it warms my heart and the warmth spreads thru all of me. thanks again to all involved.

also..... i have started preparing a site for a sauna by attacking the hard clay to make a bit of levelness. pick and shovel work. i recall somewhere a reference to a pickaxe as a misery whip. i like to consider it one of my aerobic workout machines.

the fence post

sixteen wooden fence posts, twenty-five steel posts, three hundred feet plus of field fence, four gates, six pounds of fence staples, two pounds of screws, empty ump fence clips (affixing fence to steel posts), and a partridge……oops. we paid a local guy with a tractor to do drill post holes for the wooden posts, and some local muscle (nice fellow with brains too) to do the heavier work of setting posts.

in an earlier part of my life i put up or fixed fence to keep animals in. sheep, goats, pigs, chickens. this fence, like the previous one in port townsend, is to keep out deer, coyotes, rabbits, and skunks. and anything else that threatens the garden or the cat. or us. there will not be any animals leaning on it. no goats climbing it. no rams butting the posts. so the construction requirements are less rigorous. still, the posts have to be solidly planted and just unrolling field fence is a chore. there are 26 horizontal wires and good fence building does require at least one staple for every wire at corner or end posts. (am i whining?) it was good exercise, and is done. now we can start a real year round garden.

looking west from the southeast corner

looking north from the southeast corner

looking at the southeast corner from inside the fence

beds ready to plant. the sunflowers in the foreground are volunteers from seeds the birds scatter from a feeder just out of the picture.

growing pains

in the midst of a midwinter warm spell our need to grow food rose up enough a month and a half ago to spur us to dig a ten foot by 15" x 15" trench and line it with chicken wire, a must-have defense against gophers here. we planted seeds for carrots and beets, and sets for onions and shallots. two weeks later, too lazy to dig more trench, we resorted to planter boxes for kale and spinach and odd containers for tomatoes and basil.

of course the weather cooled off. the seeds sprouted after a bit but grew slowly. the tomato starts seemed stuck in time. then the uncertainties of global weather change kicked in and early summer returned. everything has responded well to several days of extra high temps in the middle of a sunny spell. and now we are back to spring fog and drizzle.

one of those tomato plants has flower buds. we hope it doesn't rot in the fog.

i may get to see all my siblings together, a rare occurrence. the brother from kauai and his wife are in san francisco now doting over their new grandson. the brother from lake chapala, near guadalajara, in mexico arrives by air sunday evening. we'll dunk him in bleach and ammonia and alcohol. our sister lives near grass valley and will drive down sometime next week.

robin is working this week, filling in at her old job at ucsc while her former boss is away so i'm the blogger.
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update..... kauai brother and spouse arrived sunday afternoon. he and i went to san jose airport and fetched chapala brother sunday evening. we imbibed and indulged and still all retired early. wonderful to see my two brothers together. sister arrives wednesday.

Cauliflower and Glass

In the middle of everything Tuesday, we harvested these four heads of cauliflower, cut and blanched them, and then froze in batches. Yum for the future.

Then it was back to the tasks at hand. Roger mowed the back lawn and I gathered spinach in the garden. When I came back into the yard, something caught my eye. The window seemed to be covered in the most beautiful spider web. At least that's what my brain wanted to do with the suddenly spectacularly shattered glass. The mower had shot a rock straight into it. Perfect shot.

spring garden stuff

it has been springlike lately, even when the sky is overcast with clouds. warm air. fir trees blossoming and spreading pollen. we have been busy outside. stuff grows. and how when it's quack grass and thistle and clover. so we have been weeding a lot. we'll use more mulch next winter.
it was about 50 degrees outside when i took this picture, and cloudy. the greenhouse is unheated and not entirely airtight, but it captures heat from any bit of sunlight.



these are datil pepper plants in the greenhouse. i started them in january just to see if the seeds i have are still viable. i couldn't bring myself to discard them. i nursed them along under a light till i had set up a little heated area for starts in the greenhouse and moved them there. i transplanted them into the growing bed on april 29. the glove is for scale.


i set out broccoli and cauliflower three weeks ago and learned about wind damage and the bad result of not hardening starts. they all survived, but took a beating. so these i just set out have nice little shingle shelters and they have been outside on the north of the greenhouse where they got some morning sun and no greenhouse heat for two weeks.




fresh asparagus harvested 5 minutes ago. this is the second year for our asparagus bed. we get enough for a meal at least twice a week.

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i read the news today. oy vey!

"Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical.
Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics.
Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria.
Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.
These were among the 107 food imports from China that the Food and Drug Administration detained at U.S. ports just last month, agency documents reveal, along with more than 1,000 shipments of tainted Chinese dietary supplements, toxic Chinese cosmetics and counterfeit Chinese medicines.
.....snip....

"So many U.S. companies are directly or indirectly involved in China now, the commercial interest of the United States these days has become to allow imports to come in as quickly and smoothly as possible," said Robert B. Cassidy, a former assistant U.S. trade representative for China and now director of international trade and services for Kelley Drye Collier Shannon, a Washington law firm.

As a result, the United States finds itself "kowtowing to China," Cassidy said, even as that country keeps sending American consumers adulterated and mislabeled foods."

this is from a front page article in the washington post (free registration required) that details the problems with foodstuffs imported from china. but we can't vigorously inspect the imports and diligently apply existing laws and standards because big biz here wants access to china's market.

i thought it interesting that a former u.s. trade rep to china would use "kowtow." the link is to wikipedia because it has the best illustration i found.

eat hearty folks.

.

rot

------------the old method of compost, informal rotting-------------

this is our old way of composting, sometimes called informal. just make a pile of everything that rots, (leave out those meats scraps though, for compost quality, and eggshells too, the raccoons can sniff them out). it doesn't look like much of a pile because it has shrunk considerably. some things take quite a while to break down into compost: corn stalks, straw, grape vines, small branches. we have not yet "harvested" any compost from this pile. i have dug into it to check and there is some good compost mixed in with the aforementioned slow rotting ingredients. there is horse manure in the foreground but the day laborer (that would be moi) hasn't yet mixed it into the other stuff. the whole thing is a bit unsightly.

------------the new improved two bin compost system!---------------

just add plant residue, kitchen scraps, and manure in layers. also, it is enclosed; so the raccoons won't rummage around in it. high class rotting. the idea is to fill one bin with a mixture of carbon (plant stuff) and nitrogen (horse manure)and let it rot. when the first bin is full its contents are shoveled into the next bin, thereby mixing it up and turning it over. the next time that the first bin is full the second should be full of ready-to-use compost. (sez so right in the instructions!)

ok. tech specs. each bin will hold close to a cubic yard. three feet be three feet by three feet. the top covers slide off to the front and halfway back to the rear. the front boards lift out to remove the contents. like the nice blue hue? those are the painted and caulked cedar trim we removed from our house when we replaced the siding with shingles. i scraped off the caulk. here are some plans.

datil peppers now?

datil pepper seedlings, with thumb for scale

when we thought we were going to be gone for a month, before sanity prevailed, we rigged a plant sanctuary in our guest bathroom. we put the cherry tomato and basil seedlings on a box in the bathtub under an HPS (high pressure sodium) yard light, and set up a drip watering system. they have done reasonably well and have been moved to the house to live, lit by the sun in south facing windows. eager to see if my remaining datil seeds are still viable, i put several in starting soil and found space under the light for them.

that was a month ago. you can see how well they are faring. but now what? warm weather, even in the greenhouse, is months away. i am not good at thinning carrots or other vegetables. i will tuck extra starts in anywhere rather than let them die. some of you gardeners may be like wise afflicted. now i have tropical pepper plants. move over tomatoes.


here is one of the cherry tomato plants, complete with cherry tomatoes.




we bought some seeds. the peas will be planted outside soon. the carrots and broccoli and beets will be sown under a tunnel cloche. the rest will wait for warmer weather. yes, we will be buying more varieties of seed.


garlic. planted last fall. these shoots were up before we had snow. they went through weeks of freezing nights, down to 20F, and many days of 31F. tough plants. tasty too.

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a bit of explanation about pictures and captions......we like to use centered captions, sometimes in small font. when we do, the rest of the text in the post is changed to single space, instead of the spacing you see now (we hope), which we prefer. thus------no captions!
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Don't forget to send your Good Planets photos to Susannah of Wanderin Weeta. Her email is susannah at dccnet dot com.

Goals and Objectives

When I worked at the university I had to submit my goals and objectives to my supervisor every year. My supervisor and I would sit down and look over the previous year's list, and my employee performance evaluation was based on meeting those goals. I was always a good employee, I met my goals or I had a good (and honest) excuse for not meeting them. Budget and funding were always an issue and a formidable problem that kept what was actually achievable well below my aspirations. It's what happens in publicly funded schools. Sure, I would have liked having all the computers in the Press Center running the same software, even the same vintage operating system. I would have liked upgrading our printers and servers, but that was just not possible within our budget. We were scrupulously honest. We never used bootlegged software, although it was incredibly tempting. We kept to our license agreements, and that was that. I just knew where and how to find ways to transform what little budget we had and turn it into gold.

Now that Roger and I are retired, we don't have supervisors asking us what we see ourselves accomplishing for the year; and yet we unconsciously make lists anyway. It's not like new year's resolutions, which seem merely to be promises to stop bad behaviors. Goals and objectives seem altogether different. One day we start a list of seeds to buy for this spring's planting; we plan the layout of the garden; we make sure the water tank is full and the soaker hoses are working; we shovel the piles of manure into the garden beds; we start cleaning up the yard for spring. We know that we want to grow more tomatoes, basil, butternut and acorn squash. Things we can freeze or store over winter. We want to grow enough veggies to cover us through to our next harvest. Is this an achievable goal? We think yes.
Then there are the other goals, the ones that are a flirtation with happenstance. I want to photograph a pair of eagles in their aerial mating ritual. It may or may not happen, and it's really out of my hands, but I know where to start looking. It's on the list because some part of me thinks it's possible. Is this an achievable goal? Maybe, but requires being in the right place at the right time.

Our biggest goals are the ones that require a lot of help from our fellow citizens. We would like to see Bush and Cheney impeached. When we read the lies and litany of deceptions these two have wrought upon our nation we are absolutely fired up to fire them. If reading about what this administration has done to deny and obfuscate the studies on global climate change doesn't make you want to see their heads on a pike, then you don't breathe the same air or drink the same water as we do. Is this an achievable goal? Maybe, but requires support from everyone.

Okay, we've posted our goals and objectives. I hope you will review our work next year and evaluate our performance. Until then, what do you think, can we do it?

PS-- We've stopped captioning our photos because in new Blogger it throws off the spacing in all the text that follows. The above two photos were taken on Tuesday. In the first photo, Roger is rototilling the horse manure into the garden beds. In the second photo, it's the eagle pair I'm hoping to photograph in an amorous moment.