Summer Garden Tour 2021

 Hello there!

Well, it's just about August and the hops are sky high!

 The garden is in full swing, kicking out basketfuls of green beans and enough tomatoes to share the love a little bit.  Plus some peppers, eggplant, summer squash, and basil.

A pretty nice haul!

Beans been on the menu.

Theodore took a moment out of his busy schedule to come join me in the tomatoes and look handsome...
(He promised he wouldn't pee on anything this time, and I think he lived up to it.)

I am looking forward to melons. . .

There are a couple dozen on the vines, sizing up, but none ripe yet.  Until that day comes, I enjoy the structure created by the vertically-oriented plants.  Their vigor seems promising.

Well, I wanted to share a video walk-through of the garden, but I guess the file size is too big.  So instead, here are a couple shots that give a little idea of the lay of the (20' x 30') land, fenced off from voracious deer, safe for the tenderest of leaves to make a life for itself, unharassed by large mammalians, except for myself and Charlotte.

Below is the view from right behind the above photo's POV, standing just outside the fence.  Some milkweed, yarrow, a volunteer (rather pretty flowered) oregano, and some groundcover chamomile, among other things, line the outside... all plants not favored by the deer.  You can see the pole beans (a flat-pod variety called Helda) towering on the right.

At the other end of the Cage of Life, the south side of the melon trellis.  An eggplant cut-off on the left, summer squash at the bottom, and peppers on the right hand side of the photo.  Sunflowers popping up throughout!

I noticed something interesting about sunflowers' blooming cycle... Being that they are asters, their "flower" is composed of many smaller flowers grouped together on the main disc, with the petals (or, technically, "ray florets") skirting the disc.  Well, I realized that you can tell how old a sunflower is depending where in the disc the little flowers are blooming.

The above flower is about mid-way through its life as a flower.

Whereas this one is just about done, the flowers which release the pollen having made their way from the outer edge all the way to the center of the disc.  As the flowerhead dries up, each little flower becomes a sunflower seed.

This also applies to zinnias and other asters, I think!  This fresh newborn zinnia blossom is just opening its first true flowers (technically, "disc florets" I believe) on the edge of the disc.

How is this useful information, you ask??  Well, actually, it kind of comes in handy when cutting flowers to bring indoors... Knowing which flowers will last the longest.  But mostly it is just cool to stumble across something new in nature, in the garden.

Visit from Nora!

Recently we had the great pleasure of having Nora out to visit.  She is my oldest niece, 15 years.  She is very smart and it was a great opportunity to get to know her more and have some good trail banter on our couple of hikes.  We talked about nature, and culture, trading historical knowledge, and generally musing about the world.

On her first day here I was excited to take her to Skyline Park here in Napa, a special place for our family.  It was a beautiful sunny clear day.

                                          

We climbed around the ancient giant fig tree:

Mt. Tamalpais on the horizon in the center:

A late-blooming Brodiaea:

We came across a California King Snake, unfortunately crushed on the trail... perhaps by a mountain bike?  And later at the top of Sugarloaf Peak I spotted this rattlesnake tail poking out from a pile of rocks:

When Catalin, the wine intern from Italy, was here and he saw the oak tree in the next picture, he ran up to it, probably hugged it, and hopped up into its limbs and I took his picture there.  I wanted to compare the two shots, but can't seem to find the photograph right now.  I'm sure it will turn up before long and I can do a side-by-side...

I love the way the oak tree skeletons look among the rolling hills... We're fortunate to have such deep blue skies lately.  Let's hope fire season is merciful this year.  

On her second day here, we made the pilgrimage down to the Monterey Bay Aquarium with my Mom and Mark.  This was my 3rd visit in one month, but I still got lost trying to find the cuttlefish!

A couple random aquarium snapshots:

Later in the week we had a fun Fourth of July barbecue at my mom's house.  Three of Mark's four sons made it, including Mark's only grandchild, Kenzo and also Mark's 97 year old mother.  We enjoyed ribs, corn, mashed potatoes, and a rollicking game of Scattergories in the backyard.

On Nora's last day in California we took a hike out to Angel Island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay.  There is a 15 minute ferry boat that shuttles you over.  

The island had some outstanding views in every direction as we circled on the fire road.

First the Golden Gate Bridge...

And then the Bay Bridge and San Francisco (right):

Alcatraz Island in front of San Francisco:

Abandoned building on hillside of Angel Island:

A noticed a number of these butterflies along the trail.  Buckeyes, I believe?  And also this species of buckwheat growing along the island's dry slopes.  I believe butterflies tend to like buckwheat as a food source...

Such a tranquil place in the center of a bustling hub of human activity.

A brochure for the park said that deer and raccoons are excellent swimmers and could cross over to the island that way.  We found this very impressive.  On our ferry ride we saw a dolphin.  Could you imagine a dolphin and a deer swimming together?

It was a fun day in a really amazing place that I look forward to visiting again sometime.  After the hike, we got some Italian food in Sausalito, and then went into the city to see a very interesting "immersive" Van Gogh art exhibit which was set up in the old Fillmore West building that used to host all the early 60's rock groups.  

It was wonderful having you out Nora, thanks for making the trip!

Yachats June 2021 Partial family reunion / Emerging from our bunkers!

Too busy bee, or not too busy bee?

The Great Poppy Blossom Pollen Frenzy of 2021:

The last 3 months have been a richly-colored blur of a whole variety of emotions, challenges, and small (and large) victories.  Charlotte's cancer treatment seems to be making significant progress.  Her blood tests indicate a steady decline in tumor markers over the last two months, and she is feeling more herself again now that they removed the chemotherapy from her treatment plan and are just administering immunotherapy infusions every 2 weeks, thus eliminating the awful debilitating side effects she had to endure the first half of this year.  The immunotherapy enables her own immune system to fight the cancer rather than using poisons to do the job.

Not only is Charlotte regaining a feeling of semi-normalcy in her bodily well-being, but at the same time we are vaccinated and Covid restrictions are lifting, so short trips and visits with friends and family are on the table once again - hurray!  Charlotte was able to visit her brother recently, and back in June I was able to go up to Yachats, Oregon to rendezvous with Andria and the kids at my dad and Gail's gorgeous home by the river, "River Song":

My pictures from the trip are just random snippets of all we did in the brief couple of days I was there.  I guess our group pictures were all on other peoples' phones/cameras.  Anyway, I'll just do a little photo dump:

I came to Oregon at the perfect time to see the Rhododendron show!

 I love my dad's yard art creations:

Columbine in front of Azalea blooms + an interesting woodland bloom, possibly Heuchera?

Susanna's love for nature, science, and snails had us running through the paths collecting specimens and speculating various hypotheses... always an adventure with her!!

It was great to see Miss Daisy again too, the sweet pooch!

It was a brief but momentous visit to Yachats after not seeing Andria and the kids or Dad and Gail in about 18 months - oh my!  I look forward to seeing more of everybody now that we are traveling again, and I look forward to coming up to Yachats more often.

An interesting observation on my flight back to California:  I was stunned by the swaths of what I am 99% sure is invasive broom, a plant that is a scourge of California and Oregon hillsides alike, easily identified by its profusion of yellow blooms in spring.  You can see clearly in this picture how it takes advantage of clear-cut sites to completely choke out all other plantlife.

Oh no!