The Cedar Waxwing Invasion

Oh my goodness, what a day. Upon finishing my homework, I went back to my room to grab my iPad. A flurry of activity out the south-facing window where the Catalpa tree is located caught my attention. Birds. Tons of birds. Larger birds. All of them in the Catalpa, flying in and around and resting on the branches. I spotted half a dozen Robins and smiled, because they haven’t been around lately. But there were other birds I didn’t recognize. Then one of them rested on a branch nearer to the window, and I could see a stripe of yellow at the base of its tail. Could they be Cedar Waxwings? I’ve never see them in our yard before and couldn’t believe it. I grabbed my camera and headed outside.

The activity and noise were just tremendous. Big groups of waxwings and robins flying all around the tree and also perching. I couldn’t get any good pictures but you can just see the crested head of a waxwing in the photo above. It was hard to make sense of all the activity - what was going on? Robins eat invertebrates, and it just started raining again, so that would explain why they were perched and ready for action. But the waxwings - I couldn’t understand what was happening. I looked down for a moment and that’s when I saw huge splotches of black bird poo everywhere, dotting the ground and the plants.

Things started to get clearer. Waxwings eat berries, but there aren’t any berries in my yard right now except for some yellow Toyon berries and they weren’t in the toyon. A pattern started to emerge - the waxwings would rest in my tree, then fly across the street to a huge group of trees across the street. Upon closer inspection, I realized those trees were Privet. The waxwings came to eat the huge supply of privet berries. And now they were pooping them out all over my yard.

Here’s what I read in Audubon:

“With thin, lisping cries, flocks of Cedar Waxwings descend on berry-laden trees and hedges, to flutter among the branches as they feast. These birds are sociable at all seasons, and it is rare to see just one waxwing. Occasionally a line of waxwings perched on a branch will pass a berry back and forth, from bill to bill, until one of them swallows it. “

Get this - a group of Cedar Waxwings is called a ‘museum’ or ‘ear-full’ of waxwings. They are loud.

More of what I read:

“Except when nesting, almost always forages in flocks. May hover briefly while plucking berries or taking insects from foliage. Often flies out to catch insects in mid-air.”

They could all be catching newly emerged mosquitoes, which would be wonderful - we have warmed up about 10 degrees at night and mosquitoes could definitely be hatching from standing puddles of water from last week’s deluge. I looked up robins, and it appears that they don’t just eat insects - they also glean fruit. So it looks like all of the birds are enjoying those horrible privet trees. Guess they’re good for something.

Waxwings are apparently common here in winter, but migrate north to breed, all the way to Canada. Hopefully they’ll hang around for a while so I can admire them!

Hazard Zones

In my Geology class, we are studying hazards. Actually, let me back up. What’s kind of fun is that I have the same teacher for both Geography and Geology, and she gives each student an amount of “money” between 350 k and 2 million, and with that “money” you have to “buy” a house in the Bay Area. Then, you study Geography and Geology by looking at “your” house and its location. Most of the students are around 18 years old, so for them this is a fantasy experience and helps them prepare for the adult world. For me, I’m enjoying taking all of these things we’re learning (i.e. what color should you paint your house based on insolation, albedo, absorption, to keep it cool in summer? what happens if you live west of the freeway on the east side of the bay, pollution-wise with the sea breeze? etc) and applying them not only to my pretend house, but to our real house in Walnut Creek. (Just for the record, my pretend house for Geography is in Richmond, and my pretend house for Geology is in Vallejo, I got $350 k for each of them, so that’s why they are in those locations. For those of you who don’t live in the Bay Area, those are two of the least desirable locations. To live, say, even in Oakland, you need to have a good $750 k, and if you want to live in Berkeley, a cool million or more, depending on views. Yes, this reminds me to say that we are studying the housing crisis here in my Political Science class, and it is enlightening.)

Hence my post a while back about the rocks underneath your property and how to figure out the age and formation of those rocks. But, at the moment, we are looking at hazard zones. The information I’m going to give here is Bay Area specific; if you live elsewhere, I’m sure you can find a local government website that can give you this, but you might need to do some digging. For those who live in the area, hopefully this will help you prepare. The website I’m going to share is new to me, I don’t know if it was around when we bought this house 15 years ago, but if it was, I never heard of it. Of course we had the hazards given to us in our mortgage agreement, and we knew that we were in a flood zone and had to pay for flood insurance as a condition of our mortgage, but that’s about all I remember. It was in the middle of our first leukemia year with Adam, he was 2 and Kate was 1 and there were other things on our mind. Sometimes I wonder how we ever managed a move at all. Anyway….

If you live here, there is a website dedicated to the local governments. It is called, fittingly enough, Bay Area Association of Governments. From here I got to their ‘Resilience’ program, which you can find HERE. My address is what’s inputted for this exercise, but you’ll want to put in your address to find out your hazards. Meanwhile let’s look at my house and the hazards I found here.

Let’s look at Earthquakes first, since that’s the first thing everyone thinks about when they think about California.

So if you go to the left of the picture, and click on ‘Shaking Scenarios,’ you can choose your fault and see what’s up. After the colors come up, go to the left again and click on ‘Legend.’ That will tell you what the colors mean. I’m going to click on ‘Mt. Diablo’ for the fault, since that’s closest to us, and let’s see what the shaking scenario is.

Yikes! All that red can’t be good. And indeed it’s not. This, according to the legend, is a very strong shaking event. Well, what does that mean? Let’s look at this chart from the USGS (United States Geologic Survey):

“Some thrown forcibly to the ground.” “Damage considerable in some buildings designed to be resistant” (!) “Buildings shift off foundations if not bolted to them.” Guess what I’m going to check about our house, ASAP???

However, if I take off Mt Diablo fault and add Hayward Fault (the second closest fault to us), I get this:

Phew. Strong, but better. Damage could be bad in old buildings that aren’t prepared. All of this makes me think we should be buying earthquake insurance, though some folks think it’s not any better than just your homeowner’s. I’ll let you do your own research on that.

Ok, let’s move on to flooding. I said that we have flood insurance already because we were told our home was in a flood zone. It’s hard to see, because we get so very little water here, but in moments like last week when I watched our back yard become a lake, it gets a little easier to imagine. Flood insurance is expensive, and many of our neighbors have had engineers come out and determine that they didn’t need to pay it anymore; they fill out a form and send it in to FEMA and that’s that. We have not done that, and are still paying the insurance, and after seeing this map, I’m glad. One thing that’s not so evident in real life is the system of creeks that carry water from Mt Diablo down to our neighborhood. On this map, that’s what’s happening when there is a big flood. Here’s how I got there - unclick any fault information in shaking, and go to ‘Flooding.’ Then click FEMA map. Here’s what I get:

So now I go to the legend, and I see we’re in dark blue which is “AO” or “AH,” I can’t tell, but what do those mean anyway? Let’s take a look:

This is directly from FEMA. Whether it’s AO or AH it doesn’t really matter, it means we have an annual chance, albeit a low one, of flooding. Glad we have that insurance.

This makes me think of liquefaction. Liquefaction is what happens when you live in a watery place and an earthquake causes the ground to become like a big, shaking waterbed. Think landfill, like the edges of San Francisco, a good portion of Alameda, Emeryville, etc. If we have so much water in our area, if the water table is so high, does that mean we’re at risk for that, even though we’re not on landfill? Well, let’s check. Unclick the FEMA thing, and go to ‘Other Earthquake.’ Then click on ‘Liquefaction Susceptibility.’

Oh dear. At this point, I don’t like to see any color at all. Well, what’s the legend say? “Moderate Susceptibility.” Hm. I guess I feel moderately about that. Not exactly reassured.

Ok, let’s look at the thing that scares me the most, Wildfire. Unclick all the Liquefaction stuff and go to “Wildfire.” Then click on “Urban-Wildlife Interface.” (This is the area I think I want to study in grad school or work in eventually.)

Legend: “Wildland Urban Interface Fire Threat.” Well, crap.

Ok ok, let’s just go all in, let’s look at landslides. We’re under Mt. Diablo, and have foothills surrounding us on three sides, so it’s possible I guess. Unclick all the fire stuff and click on “Landslide.” Let’s look at “Rainfall induced landslide” first.

Hooray, we’re in the clear!

Let’s look at “Earthquake induced landslide” next. Will it also be good news???

Hm… legend? “Area Not Yet Evaluated.” Well ok, let’s see the existing landslide distribution, then - maybe that will help.

OOOO, close, but it just misses us. Hallelujah. That’s one thing I don’t have to worry about!

So you see how this could be a valuable tool for preparing your home for a local hazard event. There are several things we can do, right away, to make this home more safe.

I hope this helps you plan for hazards in your areas, too. If nothing else, it’s fun to go and click around on the map. Go ahead, take a look at San Francisco, and see what it’ll be like for folks living in the Millennium Tower.

Restless

It’s that time of year. I’m itching to start summer vegetable seeds, to rip off the row cover, to spend whole days out in the sunshine, to see masses of spring flowers appear in the pollinator gardens. It’s a desperate feeling, and one that cannot be soothed with nice family dinners in the still-early-dark, or browsing seed catalogs, or even walking around the garden. I imagine all creatures in the Northern Hemisphere feel a similar restlessness, whether still dealing with snow and ice, or dreary wet, or just grey skies.

Our property has been inundated with water. The west coast hosted an atmospheric river that flowed through our sky and simply dumped rain at the lower elevations, snow at the higher. This is good. This is necessary. This is exactly what California needs. All of that is true, but it does make for dampened spirits. I am thanking our December selves for obtaining and spreading all those wood chips, as they do a really good job of soaking up a lot of moisture and keeping us mud-free. But our hard landscape surfaces were standing lakes for a good week, and the chickens were miserable inside their coop, looking forlornly out at the rain.

February 15 is our last average frost date, but ‘average’ is the key word there, because we’ll have frosty nights this coming week. So I can’t take the row covers off just yet, even though I’m dying to. I bought a cheaper brand that is barely hanging on, having been ripped to shreds by our high winds and rain. Agribon holds together much better, but it comes in inconvenient sizes and is so much more expensive. Still, once we’ve used up our roll of the cheap stuff, I’ll go back to Agribon. Even though it’s low-quality stuff, the row covers have done their job, protecting all the winter veg from the elements, while still letting in light and moisture. Everything is looking good and tasting good, and that’s really the most important thing about having a winter garden - providing lots of food in the colder months.

However the canning shelf is looking light in everything but pickles, and I yearning for a fresh strawberry. It’ll be a while yet.

I’ll start my veg seeds the first weekend of March, as I always do, in hopes that I can plant them out the first weekend of May. I already know where everything is going to go, planning the summer garden is long since a completed task, and now I just wait. The internet is full of gardeners starting seeds, so it’s hard to resist that urge. From experience I know that it’s best to put it off a while yet.

Meanwhile in the open spaces the wild almond trees have begun to flower, and I’ve seen the first of the poppies, and wild mustard is starting to make its robust presence known. I notice an increase in bird activity, and the bees are loving the cold sunshine. Soon we will need to add some room to their hive, and swarm season will be upon us. Vector control says it’s time to start putting out yellow jacket traps in hopes of catching the early queens, but I don’t usually start to see them until March. Once in a while I see a native bumblebee, but mostly they are still hibernating. I’m hoping that things will really start to wake up in March, and thats the time this restless feeling will go away.

February Cooking: The Chickens Begin to Lay Again

Look at those bright orange yolks. That’s a direct influence of the daily greens I give our chickens to eat. All that good nutrition ends up in the eggs and makes them even more desirable. I love when the days begin to lengthen and we can eat eggs again!

Having too many eggs is rarely a problem. Lately I’ve been having a couple for breakfast scrambled with fresh grapefruit on the side. Adam likes ‘em with crispy whites and runny yolks over some sautéed greens and some of my sourdough toast. Poached eggs in a roasted tomato/garlic/basil sauce (which I freeze in jars every summer) is a quick shakshuka, dried chilies added for those who like it spicy. Sopped up with stale bread or a pita, or simply eaten with a soup spoon, it’s hard to beat.

Dinner frittatas are a good way to use up excess eggs, because you’ll need 8-12 eggs depending on how hungry everyone is. You can throw in any vegetable you have on hand, fresh or already cooked; bacon or pancetta or crumbled sausage; leftover beans or rice or cheese. We especially love them with greens from the garden, but soon we’ll switch to asparagus or spring peas (that’s not until March, usually). We always finish the frittata with some freshly grated parmesan or a bit of crumbled goat cheese, to give it a spicy salty kick.

If I have a lot of eggs and we’re craving a dessert, I like to make chocolate pudding. This recipe from The Kitchn is perfect, because it’s low sugar and high protein and uses plenty of dark chocolate. I make it at least once a month when we have extra eggs. Later this week I’m going to try this recipe from Food + Wine for avgolemono, because not only do we have a lot of eggs, we also have a lot of lemons.

Cauliflower starting to head up in our garden - this is the Romenesco kind.

February is when all the brassicas start showing up at the Farmers’ markets - broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower are abundant here because they grow well over the winter and taste even better if touched by a little frost. My go-to way to cook any vegetable is to toss it with oil and salt and roast it in a 425 degree oven for 20-30 minutes, but once in a while it’s nice to have it some other way. Lately we’ve been sautéing them in butter and garlic, which is divine. Recently, the Washington Post posted this recipe for a green curry cauliflower, which is on my short list for weekend cooking. It looks delicious. Cabbage will soon be available and we’ll eat it fresh, as crunchy salad, and make some into sauerkraut. I’ve yet to find a cooked cabbage recipe I like; if you have one, please share it!

Overwintered carrots, parsnips, and beets are a frequent sight in February. Carrots and parsnips roasted together are a classic, and even better roasted underneath a salty, buttermilk-brined chicken. You could add some beets to that too, or roast them separately - wash, wrap in foil, then after roasting, slip off the skins. Don’t forget to wash and saute the beet greens, as they are delicious. Swiss Chard is in the same family as beets (Chenopodiacea, actually now Amaranthaceae, these things are moving targets), and is a beautiful sturdy green to add to your salads or sautes.

‘rainbow lights’ chard

Actually, you can make a chard gratin just as you can with any spinach or kale. Or mixed! Delicious, for those who like their vegetables a little richer and cheesier.

I grow fava beans (or broad beans) every year as a cover crop in many areas of the garden. Beans and peas form an association with a bacteria that allows nitrogen to be collected from the air in the soil and fixed on the plant roots. If you cut down those plants before they set fruit, the roots (and the nodules of nitrogen) will decompose in the soil and become available to the next set of plants. So I do that a lot in the winter because fava beans are reliable winter growers in California. However this year I’m keen to try some of the fruit, so I’m letting a few plants produce pods.

When you talk to folks about eating fava beans, they say two things: They’re delicious, and they’re hard to prepare. That’s because the beans take some extra steps in cooking. Actually, if you eat the pods young, like the one in the photo above, you can eat it whole like you would a string bean. And the leaves are edible too, just like pea shoots! But if you wait until the pod is big and knobbly, you shell the beans out of the pod. Then you have to blanch them in boiling water for a minute, and then slip the inner bean out of its outer coating. It’s like the beans have two coats. Once blanched and shelled that second time, you can saute the beans with butter or oil and they are delicious.

I’d love to hear what you’re eating out of your respective gardens! March will bring a plethora of delicious spring foods, and I can hardly wait.

Believe it or not, some Geum plants are blooming!

Surprise Harvest

I bought some organic Yukon Gold potatoes from the store to make sorrel soup today. As is usual, there were a couple of sprouting potatoes in the bag, so after I made my soup, I took those rejects out to the garden. I figured I’d plant them in the round fire ring where I had planted potatoes (both Yukon and Red) back in August and again in October. December and January frosts had killed those plants, so I figured there would be no crop. But when I dug down to plant these sprouting potatoes, look what I found! I was so surprised. I then went over to the Romaine and Cabbage bed, where I had noticed potatoes growing (volunteers) in October. The frost had killed them too, even under cover - or so I thought. There I found a bunch of fingerling potatoes! What a wonderful unexpected harvest! I didn’t need to buy potatoes for my sorrel soup but I didn’t know that. I will cut and roast them all tonight to have with our Boeuf Bourguignon.

This is the sorrel soup I made, one of my favorites. I’ve already written about it here, with a recipe, if you’re interested. I think it’s entirely worth growing sorrel just for this recipe.

A couple of interesting things to share:

One is my garlic crop.

I planted hardneck garlic for this year (you can read all about my weird garlic 2018 here), two different kinds. The one on the left is Spanish Roja. The one on the right is German Red. See how differently they grow? The Spanish one is tall and thin and light green, and the German one is short and sprawly and dark green. I can hardly wait until May to pull these guys up and see how they look underneath. I have sort of an idea, because I had extra seed garlic after planting, and since seed garlic is just a head of garlic like you buy at the store (except organic in my case and from a farm), I’ve been using the extra for cooking. The problem is I don’t know which is which. Both are extremely easy to peel which is fabulous, and apparently a feature of hardneck types. Both have reddish outer skins. Both taste great. But one has giant cloves and one has smaller cloves. Whichever one has giant cloves wins. That’s the one I will plant again.

The hardneck thing is going ot be hard for storage though, since I guess you can’t braid hardnecks. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Second interesting thing:

I’m taking Geology this term, and my professor showed us how to figure out what kind of rock is underneath our houses.

First, go to the USGS website.

Then, click on the national geologic map database.

Then, when you’re on the US, look at the right side and scroll down to ‘location’ and type in your address. You’ll need to have Adobe Flash on your computer to use this. Click the magnifying glass to zoom in or out.

The map will pinpoint your location at the bottom of a red diamond. You will see lots of codes, like at my house, it says the soil beneath us is ‘Qa.’ You’ll need a key to determine what the codes mean. Scroll down the left side of your screen and you’ll see a hand with the letter ‘i’ in a circle. Double click on that, then click on the area around your house. A little black box will appear with some choices. Choose ‘browse.’ A separate window will open up with a key to your little part of earth!

My property is made up of alluvial soil, that is, soil that was under water. This explains our hardpan clay.

If you look at my map, you’ll see lots of little broken black lines to the right (east) of our house all along the hills. Those are all faults. In California, hills pretty much mean faults. Can you see the orange section to the right of our house? That’s called Shell Ridge, and it’s called that because there are all kinds of fossils of seashells on those hills. It used to be an ocean. Then somehow the earth was lifted up (earthquake?) and it emerged from the water. However, if you look at the type of rock in that area, you’ll find it’s basalt - which comes from cooling lava. So at one point there was a volcanic eruption under that ocean. It also tells you the age of the rock - this particular rock comes from the Orinda Formation, which is from the Pliocene age. That’s somewhere between 2-5 million years ago!

I’m not sure if this is your kind of thing or not, but I find it fascinating.

I’d love to know how you’re all faring, winter-wise. I imagine some of you are in the deep freeze of the midwest about now. I’m sorry to tease you with shots of garlic and potatoes when you’re probably breaking ice in your livestock waterers every hour. Please let us know how things are going on the other side of the country!