Latter Spring Garden Check-In!

Well, it's been a while, but I just wanted to share something that I am excited about, and that is the "Cage of Life" garden.  Twenty feet by thirty feet with an 8 foot tall perimeter.  Safe from nibbling deer and defecating cats.  My garden oasis!  It has been getting better every year, as I feed more and more compost and soil amendments into it.  It is nice to see the soil fluff up and the weeds lose some footing as the time and energy spent cumulates into more pay-off in terms of ease of digging and overall plant health.  This year is sure to be a good one!

View from outside the "Cage".  An assortment of deer resistant plants adorn the perimeter.

Entering the Cage and looking to your right you see the garlic patch, which has an A-frame of deer fencing going over it which will serve as a trellis/arbor for my recently-planted melons.  And to the right there is a nice lilac-pink sweet pea with some pink flowering thyme growing as a groundcover around it.

Behind the sweet pea, as you make your way to the right, are some of the first little tomatoes forming on the Atomic Grape tomato plant.  The Atomic Grape is a hybrid created by a local tomato breeder who has actually gotten a lot of recognition for his outrageously colorful and flavorful and sometimes oddly-shaped tomato varieties.  This variety produces football-shaped thumb-sized fruit that are streaked with gold, purple, red, and greenish tones and are remarkably sweet, while still remaining somewhat firm.  You gotta try 'em!

Immature fruit of the Atomic Grape tomato.  That deep purple hue is indicative of anthocyanin pigments, which are antioxidants like blueberries have.

And continuing to the right of the garden entrance is a robust little eggplant.  I think this one is a round green type from Thailand.  I bought it on a whim from the nursery--we'll see how the fruit tastes!  The plant is sure looking good, though.  I have always loved the ornamental beauty of eggplants.

Eggplant

And then there is the pepper section with mostly sweet peppers: 3 Red Marconi, 2 Sweet Banana, a Hatch Green Chile, and a Poblano.  Also, in a separate area, is a Cayenne, the "bad boy" of the bunch in terms of heat.  These have been putting on some real deep green growth and seem to be very happy with the bed I made for them, which included homemade compost and some organic granular fertilizer.

Various peppers

Here is a shot of the aforementioned recently-planted melons.  This side of the arbor is "Ha'Ogen", a very aromatic green-fleshed melon thought likely to have originated in Hungary.  On the opposite side of the A-frame are Charentais, which are French heirlooms that are orange-fleshed and extremely sweet.
The garlic that is behind the melons should start to turn yellow soon and flop over.  After allowing it to dry for a couple weeks, I will be able to harvest it.  At that point I could try planting lettuce there to utilize the shade that the melon vines will soon be providing... we'll see.

Young melon plants in front of garlic

Here is "The Stump", an old walnut tree burl that my old neighbor William helped me pull out of the ground when I first moved here.  I remember watching him whack away at the roots with an axe and then rig his truck's winch up and haul it out.  It looks very nice as a tabletop in the garden.  Recently it has been the home to this collection of seed-grown madrone trees (on top) and a couple purchased manzanita bushes (on ground, in front) which I am letting grow and should be planted this Fall.

The Stump

It is looking like a great year for onions, which is nice because last year my onions all "bolted", which means they sent their energy into making flowers instead of big roots, leaving a very skimpy amount of onion for me to eat.  But look at these honkers!!!  The tops have bent over and they are now in their "curing" stage, where they are allowed to dry in place for a couple of weeks before harvesting (just like the garlic are going to do).

Approximately 25 red onions (foreground) and 20 or so yellow (background). 
Also you can see a "Helda" bean, front left, starting to wind its way up some twine.

A little row of "Heldas" growing beneath the canopy of some volunteer sunflowers.  I figured I would let the sunflowers do their thing even though they block some sunlight.  Maybe they will form a nice scaffolding for the vining beans?  I did remove some lower leaves of the sunflowers to allow a bit more light down.

This back corner of the garden is starting to get taken over by a milkweed plant Asclepias speciosa, which is really hitting its stride in year 4, sending runners up 6 feet away from its parent plant.  I am glad it is doing well, but I am trying to encourage it to colonize outward in the other direction, since it is safe from deer, due to it's milky white sap.

Asclepias speciosa
(I am hoping to catch that cat in the background and have it fixed soon)

Milkweed growing with pink Yarrow, as well as the orange/yellow Calendula which is fading from its winter glory.

There are many species of milkweed and they are (all?) host plants for the caterpillars of the Monarch butterfly.  I have yet to find any on my plants, but I hear that the bigger your area of milkweed, the more likely the butterflies are to find it, so *fingers crossed*!

You can see how this species earned the nickname "Showy Milkweed"
Ooo la la!

And then along this back side are some tomato plants.  The picture is a little blurry, but you get the idea.  They have all rebounded very nicely after starting their lives out with a little frostburn shortly after I planted them (I should have waited!).  I have been patrolling them vigilantly and pruning lower leaves to ensure no disease takes hold.  We had a bad problem with blight on our tomatoes at work this year and I didn't want any of that in my garden.  So far so good!

Tomatoes and Basil

Alright, thanks for taking the time to check out my hobby!  I'll end with a native Soap Lily blossoming in front of a purple Foxglove.  The soap lily sent up a flower stalk this year (the first since I planted about 4 years ago) that is taller than me, with the top 2 feet branching out into these clusters of recurved star-shaped white flowers.  Very graceful.  The root of the plant contains saponin and was supposedly used by indigenous people as a soap, among other uses.  I just read that a plant takes about 10 years from germination to flower.

Soap Lily in front of Foxglove

A Nice Day in March

The sunny days we've been having called for a wildflower walk.  Three friends from work and myself drove up to Moore Creek Park near Lake Berryessa.

Indeed, the hills were alive

Lots of vetch, and lots of butterflies

Mourning Cloak

                                                 

Delphinium nudicaule

A field of lupine and a Dudleya succulent

Sanicula bipinnatifida (Purple Sanicle)

This dog ran up to us from down the trail and he and Thomas hit it off!

We noticed caterpillars on the monkeyflower shrubs.  I believe they are Variable Checkerspot butterfly larva.  I have been growing this type of monkeyflower from seed and recently planted a dozen or so around the house, so with any luck, maybe they will be nibbled by these beautiful little creatures one day!

type of clarkia perhaps?

some type of bindweed / wild morning glory

An elegantly arching manzanita

and a very large and sprawling specimen, wow

Who spilled blue paint?

I call this one "West Side Story Standoff" in honor of my wonderful mother who has watched the new West Side Story 4 times in 2 months.  We watched it in Pat and John O'Connor's home theater, and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

                                         

Snacking in a very comfortable oak tree. 

Iris

Mule's Ear

Surprise!

 Any experienced gardener around here knows that you can't trust a warm and sunny February to remain that way.  After many flowers were starting to open up early we were hit with a 3-Year Low Temperature of 24 degrees, including a brief sort of snow-hail the afternoon of February 22nd!

A video of the soft hail (like little pea-sized snowballs) at the nursery:

Sage, one of the two nursery cats, waits patiently for entry to the greenhouse:

Charlotte and I have been focusing on nutrition lately.  We've been getting especially excited for these new bean varieties and recipes we have been trying out from an heirloom bean seller that is headquartered right here in Napa, Rancho Gordo Beans.  Charlotte got me their cookbook as a gift last year.  I have infinite respect for the bean as a cornerstone of nutrition.  They really are a gift, and they make my body feel like it is functioning at optimum power, and they're delicious!

"Ayocote morado" aka purple runner beans cooked and cooled and dressed up with shaved carrot, radish, cilantro, pumpkin seeds and I-forget-what-else-but-it-was-amaaazing!  The beans had a rich meaty flavor.  I drank the excess broth, which was like an incredible hearty beef broth.

"Royal Corona" beans were the size of my thumb, just about!  We cooked these a bit longer and then marinated them in olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, etc.  Creamy and rich, these were a delightful and filling snack or meal!

"King City Pink" beans are touted for their use as a basic pot bean, creating excellent broth.  Supposedly they "helped put King City on the map" and were a very popular variety from the 1930's through to the end of WWII.  John Steinbeck even mentions them in Tortilla Flat!  We made these with just the basic treatment, cooked in a pot with carrot, onion, garlic, and celery - perfection.

"Finally, she called Danny's friends into her kitchen and explained that it was beans that they needed. The fire of their passion renewed, that night, four shadowy figures snuck past the sleeping guard and into the Western Warehouse Company. They emerged shortly afterwards struggling through the shadows under the tremendous weight of four one hundred pound sacks of pink beans.” -from Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck

Another fun culinary treat was cooking this rainbow trout that my mom's partner, Mark, caught at San Pablo Dam.  He gutted and scaled it.  But this was my first experience cutting a fresh fish.  I removed the head and tail and did my best to evenly splay it open in two halves so that the vertebrae would mostly come out easy.  Charlotte made her great roasted carrots as a side.

Around two and a half pounds.

View from beneath the Pyrex.  We dressed it up with lemon and orange slices, rosemary, sage, and garlic.  It turned out great with a nice citrus flavor.

It is March 7th now, and the weather has warmed back up again.  Some plants sustained some damage in the freeze, but I don't think we had many plant losses at the house.  It has been interesting observing various plants' responses to such a shift in temperature, going from 70's to 20's, there were a lot of aborted flowers, and some borderline-deciduous plants that looked like they might make it through winter without shedding their leaves had to change their plans.  But I am happy to know that most of our garden could handle it just fine.

Here is one winter bloomer that I have really enjoyed since planting it as a little 4-inch pot that was getting thrown away at work, probably around my first year at the job.  I planted four, initially, and two didn't make it, but our two remaining specimens are as tall as me now!  Black Sage (Salvia mellifera) is, apparently, California's most common sage (I am surprised to read that just now), inhabiting the Southern coast of the state and providing food for hummingbirds and bees, as well as quail and other birds that eat its seeds.  It is a wonderfully handsome shrub, with an interesting and eye-pleasing branching structure.  And it is one of our first flowers of the season!

Salvia mellifera

That's all for now!

Warm mid-winter

January and February were warm... too warm...

The plums burst into bloom.  These are just a "wild plum" my great-aunt and uncle had on the property forever.

A thoroughly dry February (not good!) made for some pretty nice yardworking days.  The "waddle" fence along the new road is now mostly done!  We started making it last winter, utilizing the wood from our property (mostly acacias,  a fast-growing and invasive tree, which bears the common name "waddle") to create a visual block.  When a colony of acacias get going for a couple of decades, as they did at this property, it is quite a project to keep it in check.  But finding a use for the wood made the chore into an even more rewarding process!  We saw this type of fence on a show about living a traditional English farm life.  Acacias are an Australian native, so I think the Britain-Australia connection is at play in the nickname.

Teddy helps slash!

Car's-eye view from the street.

My dad made this sweet little birdhouse kit which I assembled and put up on the east-facing wall of the house.  I am hoping it might attract an oak titmouse or a white nuthatch, both of which I have observed around the house.

We also finally got around to installing the bat box that Charlotte and I made for her dad, Hal, for his birthday back in October!  We are very pleased with how it turned out aesthetically and we did our best to adhere to the recommended dimensions and overall design.  I think it should be very accommodating for any prospective bat family.  Hal and Selene have seen bats in their yard before, so that is promising. 

To hang the bat box we had to drill four holes into stucco siding.  Sounds easy, right?  NOT!  😂  Charlotte and I took turns leaning with all our body weight into the electric drill.  Whew!

The weather was so mild that we even took the boat, Lady Goldenrod, out to Lake Sonoma with our friends Jake & Melina.  The lake was desolate on a weekday in February!  We cruised around and ate lunch and had a very pleasant day.

Fun reflection picture

Fun Charlotte picture :-)

Well that is all for now!