Early Morning Sunrise with a Mountain View

 Looking East

 Looking North Over the Mountains

 Looking East

Looking Northeast

Winter Garden 2014 is Planted!

This will be a bunch of boring pictures but I wanted to post the first planting of my winter garden.  This is our plot at the community garden, it measures 18 x18 feet.

All of my seedlings, garlic and seeds ready to go

Lacinato Kale (Dino Kale) from July

Sorrel was planted from seed in July

After rototilling and leveling the ground

Making the paths around the beds

All planted

This San Marzano tomato is doing better now than it had all summer.  I am going to try to keep it growing for next years cuttings.

2 Rocket Arugula, 6 Oak Leaf, 6 Mesclun, 14 Marvel of Four Seasons, 17 Buttercrunch lettuces

6 Cauliflower Graffiti, a purple color

14 Garlic plants and Spring Onions planted throughout the garden.

Far left is the Sorrel and 7 Ruby Swiss Chard seedlings.  Center raised bed on far right, Kohlrabi 3 rows, Red Beet 1 row, Chioggia Beet 1 row, Gourmet Beet 1 row. Center raised bed on left, Broccoli Raab 2 rows, Romaine lettuce Freckles 1 row, Easter Egg radish, White icicle radish, and French Breakfast radish sharing 1 row.  I still have space in the middle of this bed to plant more.

6 Lacinato Kale seedlings

halfway down this row is where I planted Snow Peas, with bamboo sticks for support

20 Chinese Cabbage called Michihili

All Planted, Watered and Nestled in!

Red-Shouldered Hawk, Painting Project, and Brick Beds for the Herb Garden!

I was on my way to my community garden plot this morning when I spotted this beauty on the pole just down the road from our house.  He saw my camera lens and took off, but not before I got a couple clicks of the camera. I'm not sure if this is a Red-Shouldered Hawk or not.   Any guesses?

Where Would You Like to Go Today?

Lots of projects on my To Do List!  I started painting the master bedroom, which we actually use as a guest bedroom, on Monday.  With the darker color, it took three coats of paint to cover and three days to complete.

This is the old color, which I loved for 10 years!  The new shade is Behr paint, a color called Farmhouse White, the same color I painted my kitchen.   It came out more of a light celery color, which is not really showing up in the photo below.  I had hoped it would have more of a yellow undertone so that I could add some pale blues to the bedding, but it looks nice.  Now I will need to find some fabric to make new drapes,  like I need another project right now.

Tomorrow we plant our community garden plot with our winter vegetables.  I can't wait to have beets, chard, lettuces and other goodies for the salad bowl.

Once the garden is planted then I will move on to the herb garden project.  For years I have wanted to put in brick raised beds.  I found these bricks for sell on Craigslist in August.  The woman I bought these from said that her father worked at a local San Diego manufacturing site in the 60's, and at one time acquired a huge amount of their glazed bricks, I bought 400 of them; I hope it is enough for the raised beds. 

 

I have a couple of bricks that are signed and dated and I hope to find a special place for those in the wall.  This one is signed LR and dated 11-3-67.  The corner is loose but I think I can "glue" it back in with some of the mortar.  Also, a lot of the bricks are what are called Clinker or Klinker bricks, which is the result of wet bricks placed too close to the fire.  A mason I once hired to build a retaining wall for us told me about Clinker bricks.  Our chimney is brick and he pointed these out to me one day.  I asked if that was a good thing and he said "oh yes my dear, those are very desirable to architects" so now I know about  Clinker Bricks.

Thanks to a very kind friend, I now have instructions on how to build the beds!  The space below is my herb garden, the photo is from 2010 and the plants are much larger now.  I will dig them out and put in pots until I am ready to replant them in the new beds.  I want to make 4 separate beds with walking space in-between.  I think I will use the Arizona Moss Flagstone for the pathways around the beds.  Now should I set those in with sand or should I use concrete?  I need to give this more thought..and call my friend.

This is going to be a big project for me! I hope it doesn't end up looking like Lucy and Ethel's Bar B Que!

Garlic Sprouts Under Cloudy Skies

We are already seeing the clouds moving in from tropical storm Simon, off the coast of Baja CA.  I don't expect us to get any rain from this storm in our area; the mountains and deserts may see some and I know that AZ is supposed to get hit pretty hard with rain.  For now I will just enjoy the moisture and these beautiful clouds.

On my To Do List for today is to transplant the kale, broccoli, cabbages, and some of the lettuces from the pony packs into 4" pots.  I could wait until I plant the garden and plant them directly but I am not sure what weather we will have.  I will have more control over watering in the small pots.

I will plant these in the garden at the end of October, they should all be showing their faces by then!

Almost twice the height of the 4 inch pot.  The cloves were planted 21 days ago. 

Foggy Morning, Pomegranate Season and Seedling Update 2014

View from our front yard, looking toward the mountains.  You can just see my neighbor's palm trees that they have in their backyard.  No mountains in the view this morning.  At least we are getting some moisture in the air today and I know the native plants and the citrus trees are loving it.

The rest of the week will be hot, hot, hot!! 

Wed

88°

64°

Thu

100°

64°

Fri

100°

61°

Sat

102°

66°

Sun

100°

63°

Mon

93°

61°

Tue

91°

61°

Wed

84°

59°

We will have nice, cool nights for sleeping though. 

My seedling are doing great.  I will plant these out in the third or fourth week of this month.  I can't believe it is October already. 

 October means Pomegranate season!  I picked one this morning and they are huge this year.  

 I only have about a dozen or so on the tree.  We had the terrible Santana winds in early summer when it was setting blossoms and hundreds blew off.  The ground looked like someone had sat under the tree and peeled dozens of oranges, leaving the peels behind, making for a very sad girl...