COLUMBINES (FBF)

Over the decades, Carol has cultivated a breathtaking assortment of columbines. Here are a few of them, accompanied by wild geranium (Sweet Melissa) and forget-me-nots from seed I sent her in a card long ago.

The gardener and her muse.

Half Moon Bay-bies

We had a particularly overcast and gloomy Memorial Day Weekend here in Half Moon Bay, but it seems that the "greenhouse" is working because we have little baby flowers and vegetables!! Today is bright and sunny, so these little ones are going to get their first real taste of pure, unfiltered sun! And then, they are going to find out about their little photosynthesis engines. How cool would it be to discover that inside you? Kinda a superhero-finds-out-about-her-superpower moment...
Here are baby wildflowers -- brown-eyed susies, painted daisies, wallflowers, scarlet buglers, bachelor buttons, coreopsis, purple coneflowers, indian blankets, alyssum, arroyo lupines, white yarrows, and mission red monkeyflowers. How awesome is it to be growing a monkeyflower?

Come here ya little sweet pea!

I'm strong to the finish when I eats my....

As Janet Jackson once said, "Gimme a beet!"

(look how cute those little red buggers are!)

Tiny little marigolds...defenders of the garden universe.

A sunflower is born.

Oregano: Hey there, what Thyme is it? Heh heh heh.

Thyme: Yeah, that hasn't gotten old. I'm just sitting here wishing you'd get transplanted.

Parsley: Yeah, but can you do THIS?

Mint: Show off.

NO ETHICS, JUST MORELS.

The annual mushroom hunt at the family hunting grounds. We took home enough to eat fresh and a few to share. Looked like the shrooming will be very good in a day or two.

Hunted up-valley to Mom's dipper that hangs on a log by a spring coming out of the hillside. Always nice to find the dipper there, have a cold quaff and know how much Mom would enjoy knowing family dropped in for a drink.

Tiny violets.

Ate lunch with thunder rumbling overhead and the pine boughs waving up and down. Told Emily the story of Rip Van Winkle, bowling and drinking with the gods.

The breeze felt great. This is a gorgeous piece of prime Oregon forest. Jim played a few tunes.

A few rounds of jump-the-creek and time to take our haul home and catch game 4 of the Western Conference finals. Go Nuggets.

UPDATE

Okra are up and ready to go into the garden today.

Radishes are ready. Methuselah the three year old onion is blooming with the rhubarb. And by some miracle we have lots of apricots in spite of the many late frosts, including one two nights ago.

So far the nasturtiums are cooperative. For some reason the nasties refuse to grow for me, probably because of our extreme dry heat. We'll see if I can finally get blooms this year.

Watercress is happy.

Herbs are doing great, especially the cilantro.

Got cannas coming up in the old grill. It'll look cool when they bloom.

Emily's cabbage is thriving next to the exotic Flamincock. Which sounds like something you get at the bar a Sandals Resort.

Off to mushroom hunting!

CHICKS, MAN.

Last year we dedided to add hens to our suburban farmlet, but out of 7 out of 9 chicks turned out to be roosters and the two hens succumbed to domestic predators, so we're back to square one with three new chicks from the hatchery. Chicks were surprisingly hard to come by this year. The hatchery was sold out for weeks. Here's Em with the Leghorn.

Here she discovers what chicks do best. Note the brown bit on her shoulder. And now she understands why chicks aren't allowed in the house.

Here are the chicks now, a bit grown up and getting their big girl feathers.

From left to right, we have an Araucana, a Brown Sex Link and a Leghorn. Translation: we'll have blue-green, brown and white eggs.

Their home is a 4x4 apple crate from a local orchard, fitted with a roof, some nesting boxes and perches. $40 for the apple box, $20 for the heat lamp, feeder and waterer and about $20 in hardware plus some more recycled wood from the neighbors' fence and a couple of recycled dowels make this a pretty cheap suburban henhouse.

FBF in HMB! Part 4

Last Friday was the assembly of the "greenhouse" part of the raised boxes. To do that, I bought polywoven plastic used for greenhouses in the northeast that is supposed to be able to withstand gale force winds, as the side of our house where we put the boxes tends to act a bit like a wind tunnel when we have storms. This is me measuring out the plastic.

My design for the "greenhouse" is to allow it to be pulled over the boxes, but also to be able to furl the plastic when the days are warm and when we are working in the garden and don't want to have to negotiate our way around it.

So, I cut the plastic to the right length to cover the boxes while allowing for approximately 3-ft. high plants in each box. Then, I wrapped the plastic around a 1"x2" redwood slat and screwed it to the fence. Leon installed 2"x3" uprights at the edges of each box, on each of which we put a u-shaped bracket. I put a 1"x2" redwood slat in the bracket to create a sort of frame, pulled the plastic over the top of it, then put another slat in the frame so it stays anchored and taught. We installed cleats on the fence and on the boxes so that we can either tie down the plastic and secure it when we want to use the "greenhouse" or we can roll and furl the plastic when we are working on the garden or it is sunny.



Here are boxes 4 & 5 unfurled.

Here they are furled.

We had plans over the weekend, so we didn't get to work much on the planter boxes, though I finished up the installation of the plastic on Sunday.
Today (Monday), however, I was determined to get the soil in and plant the garden. Mom recommended a blend of a third each of soil, peat moss, and compost/manure. Because I got soil that was already mixed with compost, I blended about 60% soil, 27% peat moss, and 13% steer manure/compost. I'm guestimating on those percentages, but I think it looked about like that.

Leon came home and helped bring in the last of the dirt, and then we got to PLANT!!!

Last week I put together a planting plan based upon the book called Great Garden Companions by Sally Jean Cunningham (thanks for the great reference, Mom!). I followed the recommendations made in the book about combining certain flowers with vegetables to fight off bad insects and encourage good ones. I'm also delighted to think about having an assortment of flowers I can pick to decorate our house!

Leon and I planted cucumbers, watermelon, basil, cilantro, peas, beans, squash, garlic, lettuce, onions, carrots, beets, and spinach. We interspersed them with sunflowers, marigolds, wildflowers, and nasturtiums. Tomorrow I'll pick up three small tomato plants, and I'm presently growing four peppers from seed, both of which I'll add to the basil bed.

Here's our "salad" box. I got the heirloom red and white pinwheel beets that I really, really hope grow okay. And we have TONS of onions....too many to plant, so maybe I'll be shipping some to Idaho.

Finished up the planting and lowered the "greenhouse" to tuck the little seedlings in for the night. It can still get cold here -- while it was 80 degrees yesterday and sunny, today it was overcast and in the mid-60's and it is expected to dip below 50 degrees tomorrow night. We are keeping our fingers crossed that this will work for the little plants!