Dancing Days

I've got that old Led Zeppelin song in my head - "Dancing Days are here again, as the summer evenings grow" - you know the one. I'm feeling it. We've had glorious weather, as the photo above shows. This was my Weeds class hike yesterday, and we did see a lot of terrible weeds (do you see that yellow flower on the hillside? That's French Broom - Genista monspessulana - which causes sane people to tear their hair out). I'm loving Weeds class, because we get out there and see the plants in nature. Below is a picture of a very prevalent weed here - Vetch - Vicia - which is beautiful but a bully for sure. This particular one we looked at had a couple of ants feeding on the plant's Extrafloral Nectary. Check it out.

Many plants have these; they are a way to attract insects that are not pollinating the plant, but are willing to protect the plant because it's their food source. Ants are very typical visitors at these nectaries; so are wasps. They will defend the plant against things like caterpillars, who would eat it. It's pretty neat to see in the wild.

We also saw plenty of native plants, including trilliums, by an honest-to-God rushing stream with waterfalls. Unless you live here, you can't imagine how cool that is. To have rushing streams where they are supposed to be, where they haven't been for twenty years, is totally euphoria-inducing.

I've tried, with no success, to find a nursery that sells native CA trilliums. I love everything about them, from their shape, to their mystery, to their common name (Wake-robin, if you please), to their delicate scent.

Dancing days are happening in my garden, too. This warm weather has caused all my Asian greens to bolt. Which is ok - both the bees and the chickens like them, and there's plenty of other greens for the Boegels to eat.

Speaking of chickens, I know you'd like an update on Ginny. She's alive, and she seems to be ok, but she is still limping around. I've witnessed her pooping, and she also laid a huge egg, so she's not eggbound. Her foot and leg look fine, so I think it must have something to do with her wing. Our vet, who makes housecalls, is coming tomorrow to give the cat her once-yearly exam; I'll have him look in on Ginny too.

Back to the garden... Here's a few highlights.

The tomatoes are going crazy in the 'greenhouse.' I leave the door open all day, and shut it at night, and I'm going to have to pot these suckers up again soon. I'm so glad we got this greenhouse built because plants LOVE IT.

Our Asian pear is blooming! This is exciting, as it's now in it's second year and looks like it will bear. I don't think you can beat these blooms for beauty. Those pink anthers on the stamens against the white petals? So gorgeous. 

The hop vines (bines) have begun their push to the heavens. Tom will need to get some guide strings up for them this weekend - these babies want to GROW. I planted fava beans in these planters over the winter, and cut them down before they set fruit, so hopefully this soil is full of nitrogen for the hops and they will be very vigorous this year.

I just ate my first strawberry of the year! Well that's not exactly true, California strawberries have been back at Whole Foods and the Farmers Markets for a couple of weeks now, but it's especially fun to have the first one from the yard. I recently learned in my basic Landscape Hort class that strawberries aren't really berries, according to botanists. True berries have seeds on the inside, like blueberries. Strawberries have seeds on the outside - but wait - those are actually the ovaries, or achenes, or the actual fruit. The berry itself is an enlarged receptacle, the part of the plant that connects the flower to the stem. You can sort of see this in a strawberry blossom:

All those yellow dotes in the center are each a pistil attached to an ovary, which will become the black 'seeds' on the outside of the strawberry. The green round pillow in the center is the swollen receptacle, which will continue to swell and become red.

Harlequin flowers (Sparaxis) surprise me every year, with their Dr. Seuss insides. Crazy.

And the bees are very very busy, totally recuperated from their brush with concentrated thyme (although I'm going to have to apply it again this weekend), and they are often all over this Ceanothus. 

I've had far too much homework to get into the hills and see the wildflowers, but I keep hearing and reading reports that they are astounding this year. Have any of you been to see them?

Rain is on tap here for next week, which is just what all these thirsty sun-drenched plants need about now, so I'm happy about that. Meanwhile, I'll be humming Dancing Days, because those long summer nights are coming. Nothing beats Led Zeppelin, of course, but I've always secretly preferred the Stone Temple Pilots version of this song, which I just happened to find on YouTube. It's especially poignant to listen to this, knowing how Scott Weiland ended up.

Sick Chicken

Something is wrong with Ginny the chicken.

She's been listless, lately - sitting around the coop, rather than up and pecking and busy. She has a limp that has worsened in the last three days. She seems to hop rather than walk, and her wing on that side is also acting a little funny. 

Her comb and wattle look nice and bright; she's drinking and eating; but she hasn't laid an egg in a long time. And two days ago, her bum looked like this:

Yuck.

Suspecting that she might be egg-bound, I soaked her bum in warm water for a time, then massaged her vent (yes, this means what you think it means - Ginny and I are now very, very close) with olive oil, and palpated her abdomen. I couldn't feel any hard egg in there, needing to come out, but I did all this nonetheless. At least now she has a clean, shiny bum.

She is not managing the climb up to the hen house each night or down each morning; I have to lift her in and out, and I put her in the nesting box to sleep as she cannot seem to roost. The nesting box is clean in the morning - no poop - which is concerning, but I have witnessed her pooping as soon as I put her down near the food and water each morning.

No egg has been produced.

I have inspected her foot and wing thoroughly but see no cuts, abrasions, broken bones, or weird skin issues.

I wrote to the UCANR chicken expert who visited our house last summer, and he also thinks it might be that she's egg-bound. Today I will do the warm water soak and olive oil thing again, in the hopes that Ginny will perk up and lay an egg. I imagine she is in pain, which troubles me terribly. I thought I'd throw it out to you guys, since I know some of you are chicken-keepers. Any ideas?

Weekly Walkthrough: Converting a Sprinkler System to Drip

This week, Tom takes over the video walkthrough, to show you how he converted our sprinkler system (meant for a lawn) to a drip system (better for our current plantings, plus better for the drought situation). We've had this drip system in place for several years now, and we're very happy with it. As temperatures in CA warm up, and the rainy season fades, it's good to have a way to sustainably (and frugally) water your plantings without the time and labor that hand-watering requires. Enjoy!

The Kitchens Garden

Today I am a guest blogger over at The Kitchens Garden, if you'd like to head on over there and check it out. The Kitchens Garden is a blog written by Cecilia, a farmer in Illinois (originally from New Zealand) who works on a smaller scale with cows, pigs, and chickens; she is surrounded by conventional cropland, but has her own organic garden. She sells some of her produce and meat to local restaurants, but mostly she farms to supply her own household. I have a learned a lot from her daily posts about farm life, and she has built up a large readership of like-minded folks, which I admire. So I'm very grateful to guest blog over there today, and it's fun to read the comments. 

I'm hoping to get a video put together today, so stay tuned for that as well. 

Here it Comes!

“A light exists in spring
not present on the year
at any other period.
When March is scarcely here

a color stands abroad
on solitary hills
that science cannot overtake,
but human nature feels.”

— Emily Dickenson

Going out at dawn this morning, it seemed that even the birds were singing it: Here it Comes! Oh yes, spring is on the way. In parts of Northern California, like Berkeley and Oakland (both with a maritime influence, and only 10 miles west of here), spring is already here. But in our backyard garden, in the shadow of Mt. Diablo, spring is just now truly beginning.

Everything in me pulls to be out of doors; yesterday morning I was out very early cutting a bouquet, and my neighbor pulled in from his night job, saw me and said "Did you spend the night out here? Didn't I see you in the exact same place just last night?" and I laughed because I can't seem to stay inside. I have piles of homework to do, housework to tend to, kids to shuttle around - but I just want to be in the garden. There's so much to do!

Part of this is the effect of the sun. We haven't had more than a day with bright sun in so long, it feels so good to just let it soak in. Would we enjoy the sun as much if we hadn't had that wintertime deluge? Probably not. There's something about being a Californian that we rarely talk about, a deep unsettled feeling that I think is suspiciously like guilt. We always desperately need rain, so we can never ever complain about it when we get it. And get it, we did, this winter. We all felt morose from the gloom, and then felt guilty for feeling morose, and then didn't talk about how morose we were, and then felt even more morose and guilty, etc etc etc. So now that the sun is out, we can actually enjoy it. We ate our vegetables, damn it, and now we can have dessert.

our peach tree

Because we had so much rain, there are a couple of notable things happening right now. One of those things is weeds. Whoa, I've never had weeds like I have this year. And since the water table is higher, the native plants and flowers are staying juvenile longer, which means the weeds have that much more time to gain a foothold. If you live here, now is the time to be vigilant! Get out there every chance you get and pull those weeds before they set seed. (Unless you like weeds. And if you do, more power to you.)

The other notable thing is that, any minute, the hills and open spaces are going to pop. POP, I tell you. We are going to have a wildflower show like we haven't had in twenty years. I keep seeing notifications from the State Parks about this; there was even an article in the Washington Post about Anza-Borrego! If even folks on the east coast are writing about it, you know it's gonna be a good year. 

Achillea millefolium, or yarrow

I'm desperate to borrow a truck and haul a load of compost and manure to amend all the raised beds and fill the new fire-rings (I have one bin of compost, but we'll need more. Looking forward to the day when I don't have to gather outside amendments!). We're eating fresh greens every day, as well as onions and the stray asparagus spear or pea pod. The carrots and brassicas are growing and getting strong. The tomato starts are going out on the backyard patio every day, to soak up the sun and harden off, though I won't plant them in the ground until late April/early May (they'll need another potting up before then). I can't tell you how many times I go out back to check on the chickens and I find them napping in a sawdust pit, in a ray of sun. 

I sit down in the sun to do the same, and then think of a million other things that need doing, and then I'm scurrying to get them done. Though I am not a fan of daylight savings time (I was just getting used to having light at 6 am!), I do enjoy having longer evenings with which to accomplish the long list of garden chores. And I do like the thought of the long, warm days that are coming. 

The bees are still mad at me for putting that Thymol in the hive to kill mites. They really don't like the smell, and many mornings I come out to find a small cluster of outliers on the landing board. It might be my imagination, but that one on the bottom left seems to be looking at me accusatorially. Sorry, ladies. You'll thank me later.

And with that, I need to get off this computer and out in to the yard. This coming Monday in class we are learning about soil - microbiology, nutrients, and how to do a soil test. This is something I've never done here because we built raised beds and filled them with our own mix. We've never tilled them, and just keep adding organic matter, rock dust, and cover crops, so I'd be interested to do a soil test and see what's happening in there. I'd also like to test our native clay soil, where all our ornamentals are planted, to get an idea what's going on there. So I'm off to take samples.

While I'm doing that, I'll notice new weeds, which will lead to pulling. And then I'll see a lizard or a newly-emerged native bee and then I'll be trying to figure out what kind it is. And then I'll notice some dead branches, and will start to cut back the native perennials. And then I'll notice the pile of mulch that still needs moving, so I'll get out the wheelbarrow.

(If you give a mouse a cookie, he'll ask for a glass of milk...)

Here's to a fabulous spring day.