Winter At Home 2010
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- From Regan's Nursery - an orange climbing rose to go along with the newly yellow house. The rose is on the back fence though, not on the house.
- A blue frog invaded the garden
- Alex builds the espalier fence in front of the house. I later planted two Asian pear fruit trees, one on each side. UC research-based recommendation is to cut off fruit trees at knee height (see http://homeorchard.ucdavis.edu) and while that is painful to do, I took a deep breath and chopped away. So now it looks like little sticks in the ground. But where I cut, it is supposed to bud out and I can select the strong buds and the ones growing in the direction I want. I let 3 buds grow, one to grow up and be the leader, and one to go left and one to grow right. The espalier has 3 horizontal wires so after 3 years I'll have espaliered trees (if they don't die) that have 3 horizontal branches going left and right; each branch 18 inches above the one below.
- I finally bought a new stove with 5 gas burners and two ovens; about twice the budgeted amount
- Also finally, I put together the mini greenhouse for starting seeds indoors. Heating mats, grow lights, four shelves, plastic cover. It was in the garage for two years as I was terrified I would need to use tools to put it together. Turns out it just snaps together and took 15 minutes.
- The unsightly compost bin. By the way I just started a worm bin as I have too many kitchen scraps to decompose fast enough in the compost bin, since Lu puts her kitchen scraps in there. If I stirred the compost weekly it would be hotter and faster but really.
- First blossom of pelargonium (California native geranium, rather small and feathery, spreads nicely as a low groundcover that blooms most of spring and summer) (and fall)
- Impatient for strawberries. The pot is in front of a native mimulus and some nice grey-green with yellow flowers small bush whose name I forget, and next to the self-seeding attracts-beneficial-insects-and-pollinators white alyssum.
- Edward keeps a lookout. In the pot are California native bulbs, which are tiny and slow growing and I am very impatient for them to bloom already, but admittedly, I planted them too late (in late Jan, as opposed to early Nov, which is recommended).
- Purple and white cauliflower grew at Almost Eden (the sunny community garden plot). Taste the same.
- Volunteer lettuce popped up in the pathway at f53 (shady community garden plot). Must have been from the lettuce in my plot that I let go to seed (reasonable conclusion :-)) I orginally got little starts from Ann who said this lettuce is an Austrian heirloom variety and is sometimes known as speckled trout.
- The succulent garden at f53 is growing in. Very hard to photograph - there are probably 20 species in there and in this picture, if you peer hard, you can pick out maybe 3 different plants (the big ones).
- Lurker
- Another lurker - Kate
- After two months, the rose is leafing out and looks like it's on steroids.
Marianne Mueller, mrm@sonic.net
Last modified: March 10, 2010