Very Exciting News!

Ladies and Gentleman,

WE HAVE EGG.

Yahoo!

It's quite a bit bigger than I imagined the first egg would be, and it has a beautiful hard shell.

Minerva, one of the Plymouth Barred Rocks, was the proud layer of this egg of perfection. She let the whole world know it by making quite a racket. Tom heard the fuss, and came running. She had performed this duty in the nesting box, even - just where she was supposed to. Good girl! (hey, those fake eggs worked!)

The summer stretches out before me, full of fresh eggs to eat - frittatas, custards, omelets, soufflés...

Meanwhile, I spent the morning at the Alameda Antiques Fair. Holy cow, what an event. I had never been before, but a friend who refinishes and reupholsters vintage pieces convinced me that I must attend. I was completely overwhelmed from the moment I arrived until the moment I left, and I'm still not sure what happened, but my pal ended up with three pieces of vintage furniture, a leather bag, a leather cuff, a worn pair of Frye boots, and a painting. I somehow came home with a new light fixture for our kitchen. We've always lived with the fluorescent light there, which I loathe, and finally we can replace it. I bought the fixture from a man who uses all sorts of repurposed items for his pieces. Our new light is actually made of a boat propeller and is very funky. The minute I brought it home, Tom took down the old light and has been working on the drywall ever since. What a guy.

what a mess!

I promise it'll look cool when it's up

Tom also has a pulled pork braising in the oven and a peach jam simmering on the stove. He's a keeper.

Tomorrow after work, my job is to pull peas - man, it got hot today! and pull shallots, and plant pumpkin and cantaloupe seeds.

The paste tomatoes are looking a little peaked, I'm not sure what's going on with them. Tom sprayed them with a copper mix today, to help combat any fungus, and we removed the straw mulch underneath. Copper is the same thing that helps prevent peach leaf curl, which is what the tomato leaves look like at the moment. We don't spray things often, but we would like to save this crop of paste tomatoes if possible. Most organic farms utilize copper spray. From UC Extension: "Copper fungicides are on the National Organic Program National List as synthetics. They are regulated for use as disease management tools, with the restriction that they must be used in a manner that minimizes copper accumulation in the soil. Like any other synthetic pesticide used in organic agriculture, a farmer must first adopt all available alternative management practices and show that those practices are not sufficiently effective. Specific preventive and alternative measures would include destruction of cull piles, planting of disease resistant cultivars, roguing/destruction of diseased plants, irrigation management, and wide row spacing. Farmers applying copper products should periodically soil test for copper to track trends in soil copper contents." It's not ideal for us to use it, and we don't often, so I don't feel bad using it today.

Plus, we had such strange weather for all of May, quite cool and overcast for most of the month. Now it's hot, the problem might just right itself. Wouldn't that be nice? Meanwhile, I'll keep an eye on things.

Gates and a Bat Box

Another guest post from Tom about construction...

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One of our plans for this year was to raise the height of the fence that surrounds the yard, so that we could grow more food for us and less for our local deer population. This past weekend we finished the last part of that work, installing new and higher gates.

The work to make new gates gave me an opportunity to work with Elizabeth's dad Tim Killen,  who comes from a line of woodworkers and who blogs for Fine Woodworking. Tim's focus for a number of years has been in using SketchUp, 3-D modeling software, to plan his woodworking pieces. I'd dabbled a little bit with SketchUp, but I've always found that having a specific project is always a good way to learn software. This gate project would be a perfect opportunity.

After a few fits and starts and YouTube tutorials, I was able to work up a model for the gates:

Front View

Rear view

We had some lumber left over from the chicken coop construction project, and used that to form the main frames of the gates. Working with Tim gave me a chance to try making some mortise and tenon joints, and at one point we used nearly every clamp that he had:

The final gate design looks a little different than the model I'd created, as we simplified the work needed to make the pickets that attached to the frames.

The gates wound up being pretty heavy, so I was glad that I'd followed Tim's advice and ordered some pintle hinges online to hang the gates. Pintle hinges come in two parts -- there's a metal strap that attaches to the gate using carriage bolts, and a pin (the pintle) that gets screwed into the post. The gate is then lowered into position so that a loop on the end of the straps goes over the pintle. Here's a closeup:

Pintle hinge

 We used two straps per gate, and each one is rated to 100 lbs, so that should hold up. Here's one of the finished gates in place:

It was a lot of fun working with Tim on the gates, and I learned a lot (like, when you subtract off the width of the stiles when measuring your rails, be sure to add back in the length of the tenons, or your gate frames will be a lot more narrow than you had planned. D'oh!).

Our other construction project of last weekend was for an Eco-project for Adam's 7th grade science class. For this project, he needed to make something that would contribute to an environment. We've been working on making our home environment a better place for animals, both wild (birds, insects, lizards) and domestic (chickens, bees), and so we decided to follow that same path and work on a bat box.

There are a lot of plans for bat boxes online, and the construction is pretty straightforward. We settled on a design from This Old House that has a fun bat motif. The box itself has an opening on the bottom, and is fairly shallow – only about 3/4" between front and back.

Adam has to bring it in to school next week, then we'll put it up high on our shed.

Beer making and garlic braiding

Tom and I are attending 'Beer School' through The Kitchn. Last week most of our assignments were preparing us for the actual brewing of beer, and yesterday our task was to go shopping for all the equipment we needed.

We visited our local brew store and had a fun time gathering up our list, which included strange-sounding things like 'hydrometer' and 'airlock.' We also got our grains. We are making an all-grain beer, which is apparently more flavorful but is a bit harder. It was fun to go into the 'grain room' and taste and smell all the grains. We also enjoyed milling the grains right there in the shop.

Employee Nolan helps us navigate milling

We have everything at home now, it set us back about $119 but we already had a significant amount of the kitchen items needed. If you had to start by getting that stuff too (stockpot, thermometer, etc) it would be quite a bit more costly.

I'm guessing that we may begin the brewing very soon. We're excited to get started making our first amber ale!

Today my fruit trees arrived from Stark Brothers, impeccably packed as usual. I soaked them in water for several hours while I prepared the beds. Last week I took out a huge ceonothus and many sunroses from along our North fence. The first thing I had to do today was borrow my father's ax and hack the stumps to pieces. I gotta tell you, nothing makes me more exhausted than using the ax. I always end up with numb hands and arms, literally dripping sweat. How did all the pioneers clear their land with just an ax? It blows my mind, every time I use this tool. Respect, pioneer dudes.

Next I needed to clear the land of mulch and dig some holes. Clay clay clay. Digging is the second-most exhausting thing in our hard-as-rock earth. I shall sleep well tonight.

Sunrose is gone, time for cherry trees...

...and here they are

only the ceonothus stump left....

...now a plum tree

I put wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of good compost in these areas, and mixed up a huge amount of flower and herb seeds, then broadcast them over the dirt. Tom hooked up drips, and in a few weeks, we'll see how these guys are doing. These trees probably won't fruit for at least two years. Planning for the future, yo. In the meantime, we'll hopefully get a nice pollinator garden going.

By the way, those cinder blocks you see in the plum tree picture are for the new rain barrel I ordered. Turns out, they don't make them the way they did five years ago when we got our old one; they no longer make them with removable lids. So you must use the spigot to fill your watering cans. (I guess it's a safety issue?) Therefore, they need to be up on blocks. Also in this picture is a small strip of bark for Joe. He likes to lie in this spot, and I keep taking away his favorite places. I couldn't bear to do it again.

I also made my garlic braids. The garlic was harvested two weeks ago and placed to cure on top of our chicken coop. It had gotten quite dry in the curing period, so I decided to go ahead and braid it. You start out with three bulbs, wired together. Then you braid, adding another bulb to the middle each time. It's a little like French braiding hair (which I was never very good at). When you've reached the top, you secure with twine, making a knot at the front and then at the back, then making a loop with which to hang the braid.

Still a little green in the middle; that will dry with time

Dad has finished my canning shelf, which has knobs on which to hang these garlic braids, and I'll be installing that next weekend.

You may recall that I made Thieves Vinegar a few weeks ago. I decanted it in to a spray bottle and used it to clean the kitchen, the shower, and our wooden dining room table this weekend. I'm happy to report that it works excellently on all those surfaces. It smells good, too - very minty. And yes, vinegar-y too. But after using chemical cleaners most of my life, it was a nice change. I guess you just have to decide what you want to smell when you're done cleaning.

I put some in another spray bottle to take to work tomorrow - what with the kids' diagnosis', sensitivities, and allergies, we try to use natural cleaning products whenever possible. So we can use this to clean the lunch and station tables when we are done.

I can think of lots of other uses for this too - I'll try it as a clothes softener this week. Vinegar naturally softens clothes and it doesn't leave a vinegar smell on them, apparently. Much better for the environment than regular fabric softeners. Plus, if we go with a graywater system, we're going to need to use different detergents/softeners anyway.

I'm desperate to plant basil and get it started, but I'm loathe to pull out the kale until it's really and truly done. So I'm leaving the kale for now, and I planted some interim basil between and among the peppers. I ordered more seeds and will just plan on succession planting once the kale is finished. I also had to re-seed a few items. You see, we've attracted an intrepid scrub jay to our yard. He came for the chicken coop. He discovered that the chickens will sometimes, in their enthusiastic scratching and digging, pitch a treat out through the fencing of their coop. He sees them scratching and comes down, perches on the edge of a raised bed, and waits for any morsel that comes sailing out. Smart bird. Apparently he's also seen me seeding beds, because I've seen him steal the seeds once I've planted them. So I have to be stealthy. I have to make sure he's not around before I go out and bury and few furtive grains of corn or beans. I feel silly looking out for a BIRD, but there it is.

Finally, we tried to get to the fence gates. We've taken to parking our cars as close to our gates as possible (three gates, two cars - one gate is always unprotected) because the damn deer are hopping the fences to get in, now that they can't get over the fence. Beans - eaten! Strawberries - eaten! ARGH. And we just didn't get to the new fences this weekend. It's top of our list, next weekend.

And that's the news from Poppy Corners this second weekend of May. Have a good week, everyone!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! This is a happy day! And Happy Passover, a couple of days late!

Our kids still get Easter baskets, because you're never too old for chocolate, or Legos.

Our neighborhood has a big egg hunt for the little kids, and then an outdoor brunch. Everyone brings a dish to share, and whatever patio furniture they can haul over to the yard where the brunch is held. This year I volunteered to do the flowers for the tables. There's a lot blooming already, so it was fun to make about 10 tiny posies, or Tussie-mussie's, as I like to call them. I know very little about flower arranging, but it seems to me that if you add a lot of color and variety, they turn out nicely.

Everything laid out for arranging

Here they are all together, waiting for transport

Saturday was the Great Tomato Sale, a local fundraiser put on by the Master Gardeners. I bought four slicing tomatoes, four cherry tomatoes, and four paste tomatoes. I also bought four sweet peppers and four hot peppers.

I plant most everything else from seed, including a few herbs like cilantro and basil. (Other herbs, I buy starts.) I don't know why I have a mental block about starting my own tomato seeds indoors and then transplanting them in to the garden - it might be that we just don't have room - it might be that I don't want to buy all the equipment, like grow lights. I'm happy supporting the Master Gardeners, who do good work, by spending a very reasonable $3 per veg.

Nothing got planted this weekend, though, between one thing and another (and a little RAIN!), so I'll try to get to that this week.

But first, I have to solve a problem. We're having some issues with Tasha the cat in the prepared, but unplanted, raised beds. And Joe the dog has been digging near the huckleberry. This never happened on the South Garden, but this back garden is firmly in house-cat/house-dog territory and I think the pets are really noticing that their hang-out space has been reduced. For the dog, I noticed that the digging happened when I hid his frisbees (because they are always littered around the yard), so I've given him those and hopefully that will appease any boredom when he's left alone in the yard (which isn't often, let me be clear). For the cat, I'm going to try a technique I found on the web, very scientific :), where you stick plastic forks, tines up, in the beds. I can't imagine those will feel good on soft padded paws. I'll let you know how this works. I'm not worried about beds where I am planting seedlings and cages, I'm more worried about where there are seeds. I don't mind pee - pee is nontoxic and a good source of nitrogen - but I don't want feces in the beds. And I don't want things dug up after the hard work of planting them.

I had a wonderful afternoon walk with Joe in the foothills of Mt Diablo/Shell Ridge area on Saturday. The hills are so green right now, and the wildflowers really lovely.

CA willow tree seed pods

Hills covered in purple vetch

Elegant Brodaiea

Blue-eyed grass and vetch

As I was heading toward the gate at the end of our walk, I looked back up the hill and saw a creature  loping down. Something made me stop and watch. It continued loping down towards me, while another one split off and went up the side of the hill. As the creature came closer, I realized it was a pair of coyotes, and the one heading my way was still coming, and was going to cross my path. I moved forward with Joe and got to the gate and watched the coyote lope up the opposite hill, then stop and look around. It was young and fairly small and quite beautiful. Normally coyotes, though curious about humans, stay well away as they are very shy. This one seemed unafraid. 

I love seeing predators in the wild. Mostly because it's unusual, I guess, where deer and turkeys are as common as  pets, it seems. I've never seen a cougar but would love to.

Hope you're having a wonderful Easter weekend, and that it involves chocolate. :)

Spring Break is here!

This week is spring break for all four of us. It's a gift of time: Time to actually accomplish the projects on the list, maybe take a nap, perhaps rent a boat on a reservoir? The possibilities are endless. However, the projects will likely get first priority, as having a considerable amount of time to complete them is just too tempting. Also, did I mention how busy it is in the garden, in spring? And with temperatures in the mid-80's over the past weekend, we got a head start on the list. We wished the neighborhood pool was open, after some sweaty working days.

a local hiking trail

Due to the warm temps, we keep a window open in our bedroom at night, and often in the wee hours around 3 am, I've been woken by coyotes up in the open space near our house. They howl and yip, and make quite a racket. I did some research and it looks as though this behavior is very common among coyote family members, especially at night. In fact, the coyote's Latin name, Canis latrans, literally means 'barking dog.' At this time of year in California, females are probably pregnant, having mated in February, and are expecting babies in April. There's still water in the hills in vernal pools, but I'm not sure how long that will last, and when the water runs out, the coyotes venture down in to our neighborhoods. They are generally not aggressive and can be quite shy, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they visit our backyard water fountain during summer nights. Which is why our animals are shut up tight after 8 o'clock every evening.

In the garden, there's still lots of greens to eat.

Pesto Chicken tart with spinach, broccoli, and peas from the garden

The kale and spinach are still producing, but the chard is starting to look a little tired, and the romaine is looking like it's going to bolt any minute. The broccoli seems to be finished, and the beets are no longer growing. Peas are being harvested daily. The garlic is starting to get a little brown in the foliage, which means it might be time to stop watering it and then harvest. I didn't expect the garlic to be ready until June, but with this hot weather, it could be ready much earlier. The strawberry wall has tiny berries and I can't wait to taste the first one. The blueberry bushes have tiny berries, too.

garlic

kale

spinach

strawberry wall

peas, and a little friend

And, we have an artichoke coming up in the garden!

My only question is: who gets to eat it???

We eat from the garden constantly; I add greens to almost every dish I make. Tonight I was making a pasta bake, and I realized I was out of ricotta. So Tom whipped up a batch in thirty minutes. That was fun!

Preparations for Easter have commenced. I had so much fun dying Easter eggs naturally last year that I wanted to do it again this year. This project takes most of a day, but the result is so pretty, it's worth it. I used turmeric, red cabbage, red onion skin, yellow onion skin, and beets this time. Put your veg or spice individually in pots with a cup or two of water, bring to a boil, then simmer for 30 minutes, covered. Strain, add a tablespoon of white vinegar, and pour over hard boiled eggs. Then store in fridge for four hours. Drain and let dry.

I used white and brown eggs this year, and I have to say I like the effect on white better.

The darker ones are brown eggs, lighter = white eggs

Blue is white egg with red cabbage, bright yellow is turmeric, orange is yellow onion skin, green is brown egg with red cabbage, red is beet, red onion skin made the brownish colors

I also spent some time over the weekend making a couple of new paintings for a blank wall. I knew I wanted to paint something from the garden, and add quotes about nature that are meaningful to me. Next time, I'd like to try a mixed media thing, with the quotes made from 'found' letters or torn out of magazines, some sort of decoupage sort of thing, though I've never tried that. Maybe that will be a summer experiment.

Artichoke and Blueberries

Do you know about the website Nextdoor? I've enjoyed being a member. Last Friday, a neighbor posted that his mother was a Master Gardener, and he had many hundreds of seed packets to give away. I responded immediately and met him later that afternoon. I scored about $100 worth of seed packets! It was like Christmas. Not only that, they were from Renee's Garden, my favorite seed house! I'm not sure how old the seeds are, or if they are even viable, but I'm willing to give them a shot. I planted a lot of the flower seeds over the weekend. I have saved the zinnia and cosmos and will plant them in a couple of months.

Flower seeds

Veg seeds

I'll store the winter veg seeds in the fridge until fall, as well.

Speaking of storing seeds, I realized that my haphazard method wasn't working. I asked Dad to build me a seed caddy, and he built one for me (that same day) out of California Claro Walnut, a special kind of wood.

It fits perfectly in the fridge!

I know I've said it before, but it sure is great to have a woodworker in the family.

We cleaned out the garage, moved some lumber, and I took some stuff out of storage. The tomato, cucumber, and pepper cages are ready for use next weekend, after I attend the Master Gardener sale. We'll need to make a few more.

I also got the bee hive ready, as the bees will be here in less than two weeks. I took the bars out of storage and put them in the hive, and made simple syrup for the bees to eat as they are building comb and starting to collect nectar. It takes a lot of energy to build comb, and I want to make sure the bees have the calories to do that. Honeybees like a 1:1 ratio in simple syrup (hummingbirds like 1:4, a less sweet concoction). 

Bars are in and tools are ready

the bee feeder is ready, just needs a mason jar full of syrup

pretty yellow simple syrup, which will be stored in the fridge until the bees arrive

Flowers continue to pop up in the spring sunshine and heat.

Harlequin flower

Monkey flower

geraniums

another geranium

Plans for this week include: Building the raised beds in the North Garden, ordering and hauling dirt to fill them, buying and planting all tomatoes and peppers, and starting nearly all the summer vegetable seeds. I'll be taking winter veg out of the South Garden and replacing with summer crops. Early April is planting time. I guess Spring 'break' means something other than a break, at least in the garden.