Ahhh - Peace and Quiet

Oh, how wonderful! A peaceful, quiet start to the day once again. In addition to our chickens, we also have three guinea fowl: Grey, a feral male that just moved in and made himself at home; Missus, a hen needing a home when her owners moved; and Tweedit, their first offspring, hatched in October five years ago then hand-raised inside the house that first winter. The Bachelor, Missus' brother and Tweedit's mate, went missing a couple of years ago - probably fell victim to coyotes while ranging outside the fence.

Tweedit and Missus both hide nests in the summertime, but we don't really want more guineas so we try to find and clean them out before the girls start setting. Tweedit did set a nest earlier this year, but none of her eggs were fertile. After losing her first nest when our neighbor found it in his shed, Missus hid another one deep inside a prickly desert peach thicket where we couldn't reach it. She brought three babies back home a couple of weeks ago (one died a couple of days later).

The dogrun up close to the house is set up as a poultry brood pen, with 1" chicken wire lining the bottom of the chain link fencing and a ground-level lean-to next to the dog house. With the enticement of a bit of birdseed, Missus walked her brood right in. Male guineas are usually pretty good fathers - staying near their mate while she's on the nest (although leaving each night to go back to their roost to sleep), and staying with the family, daytimes, after they've hatched.

In years past, the female in the brood pen will start calling to her mate, sleeping in the chicken coop overnight, at daybreak. Guineas are LOUD!! Both genders will make a one-note AWK! AWK! AWK! alarm call (they make excellent watchdogs). Plus, only the females also make a two-note call: BUCKWHEAT! BUCKWHEAT! (we don't sex the babies - waiting until they start calling is the only way we can tell gender). Either way, a guinea's call sounds like a very loud rusty pump handle screeching - not really the thing you want up near your bedroom as a general rule.

So that means when we have baby guineas (called keets) in the brood pen, we get woke up at the crack of dawn (maybe what she's really saying is "COME HELP! COME HELP!"). So I'll stumble out, trying to not open my eyes too much so I can go back to sleep, and open the chicken coop. In the past, Grey's been a really good mate - as soon as I'd open the coop he'd be first out, fly up onto the gate, jump down, run up to the brood pen, and go right inside to spend the day with Missus. Peace and quiet, and I can go back to bed.

But this year, Tweedit didn't have any babies to tend, so she's been out and fancy-free all summer. She and Grey foraged together whilst Missus sat her nest. And once Missus was up in the brood pen, Grey decided he'd rather hang with Tweedit. That meant, for the past two weeks, Missus starts calling at first light, AND DOESN'T SHUT UP!

I can get cranky if I don't get enough sleep. It was time for the babies to go! So, yesterday, we put a listing for free guinea chicks on Craigslist and gave them away within hours. Once the babies were gone, Missus rejoined Tweedit and Grey, and all were back in the coop last night. And I got to sleep in this morning.

Our Bike Valet Rack

I spent quite a bit of time this weekend sitting on various folding chairs outside. Luckily, it was a beautiful weekend to be doing just that.

Saturday morning, it was my turn again to staff our bicycle valet booth at the downtown Farmers Market. Saturday evening, Aries wanted to take our little Honda to the last Run-What-Ya-Brung Show-n-Shine downtown, so we spent a few hours there, visiting with all and sundry. Then, Sunday evening we volunteered at the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival at Sand Harbor - getting there early to help people get settled in their seats, getting our dinner just before the show started, and then sitting back to enjoy "Much Ado About Nothing" under the stars.

We had a new piece of equipment for our bicycle valet - a bike-hanging bar. Just when I finished putting it put together, someone walking by asked if it was a hitching post for horses (it could happen - this is still a bit of an old-West type of town). I explained it was for a modern type of steed. One of our Muscle Powered members made the rack so we could easily fit more bicycles into a small space.

It's built a bit like a pipe saw horse. Jeff took a long piece of 2.5" pipe and cut criss-crossing holes for 1" pipe legs on each end. For storage or transport, the leg pipes can slide inside the big pipe. A bolted-on wrap-around bracket (I'm not technical, so not sure of the real name for it - just look at the picture) near the top of each leg stops the big pipe from sliding down further, making a stable standing rack.

When assembled, the big pipe stands about 4' high. Wrapping the crossbar pipe with old bicycle innertubes gives it a padded, non-slip surface. People just wheel their bike underneath and then lift and hook the front part of the seat over the bar. The front wheels of the bigger adult bikes rest on the ground, smaller ones and the children's bikes hang completely from the bar.

I brought a thermos of cafe au lait, some cotton yarn and a crochet hook. I had a nice place to sit, under the sunshade, with lots of folks stopping by to visit. There was a great duo providing live music. I spent a very contented morning, out in the fresh air, feeling so much a part of this wonderful community.

The Washoe Zephyr

Temperatures are back into our normal summertime range once more - days around 90F, nights around 50F. And our Washoe Zephyr is back again too. As Mark Twain put it, in Roughing It:

The "Washoe Zephyr" (Washoe is a pet nickname for Nevada) is a peculiarly Scriptural wind, in that no man knoweth "whence it cometh." That is to say, where it originates. It comes right over the mountains from the West, but when one crosses the ridge he does not find any of it on the other side! It probably is manufactured on the mountaintop for the occasion, and starts from there. It is a pretty regular wind, in the summer-time. Its office-hours are from two in the afternoon till two the next morning; and anybody venturing abroad during those twelve hours needs to allow for the wind or he will bring up a mile or two to leeward of the point he is aiming at. (more of the quote here; BTW the Washoe (WA-show) are the local Native American tribe)

So that means if I'm hanging laundry out, that I have it back in by early afternoon (not a problem - it's dry within an hour), or risk having to go fetch it from the far corner of the lot. The umbrella on the deck makes a nice shady place for lunch, but must be down shortly afterwards or it will end up in the next county. Since I wear contact lenses, I always make sure I've got a pair of wrap-around sunglasses handy whenever I'm outside. At least, I know if I want to get away from the wind, all I have to do is get up into the pine trees just a few miles to the west.

Oh, Brrrrr!

I know, not the normal thing you say in August, is it? But we've got a cold front moving through today and into the evening. Attention weekend campers: they're even forecasting SNOW above 8,000 feet tonight. We live right about 5,000, so no snow here (I hope). But we have had bits of rain off and on this afternoon and our temps here are expected to be in the low 40's by sunrise tomorrow.

Saturday, August 8th, is Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbors' Porch Day, so that's what I wrote about for my turn on the Simple Green Frugal Co-op Blog, including a couple of my favorite zucchini recipes. I just picked my first zucchini last week, but might have enough by Saturday to hang a bag on a couple of doorknobs nearby.

No tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, corn or beans yet. I pulled the shallots a couple of days ago, and set them out to cure. I had to scurry out quick to get them out of the rain and into the shed earlier. We're feasting on the early cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli here lately.

And one more little item - new mouths to feed: When I went out, dodging raindrops, to collect eggs this afternoon (an even dozen!), I noticed all three guineas were over under the fruit trees. Since Missus has been missing-in-action for a few weeks (figured she had a nest hidden somewhere), it was nice to see she's still around. And then, when they all came over to beg for birdseed, I saw she had three little day-old keets (one grey and two black) toddling behind. We use the dog run as a brood pen, so I quickly set up a little waterer and some chick starter in a low pan inside. Shaking the birdseed scoop, I enticed all three adults into the pen, babies following along. At dusk, Missus had settled down inside the doghouse lean-to. I opened the gate to let Tweedit and Grey out, and they headed down to the chicken coop for the night. It's nice to see that Missus knows enough to get those babies out of the wind and rain.

Our Little 1972 Honda 600

We have a busy calendar - lots of things to do as our summer continues. Some of it revolves around a little toy in our garage - a 1972 Honda 600 2-door sedan. It's been in the family for years - originally a niece's high school car. After she blew up the engine, she dumped it at her grandfather's house. Aries' dad started fooling around with it - finding another engine to at least get it running again. He gave the car to Aries, and over time he's cleaned and fixed it up a bit more.

A few times a summer, a local car group puts together a Run-what-ya-brung Show-n-Shine and Street Dance in a local casino's downtown parking lot. Since Aries works on Saturday, he's never around for any weekend daytime car show events, but we do like to take the car downtown for the occasional Saturday evening dances.

The car is no showpiece, but since it's still running and pretty much still all original is it a bit of a curiosity. I don't remember them at all. I grew up in Colorado - maybe none of them could make it over the Rocky Mountains. But I guess they were really quite common back in their day on the West Coast.

We set out our lawn chairs, pop the hood and the trunk, sit back to people-watch, and visit with all and sundry. Lots of people stop to tell us stories from their high school days and "a car just like that." Kids just love it - a real car just their size. If there were a prize for "cutest car" we'd win it - that's what women say when they see it. I love seeing the smiles on faces when they see us driving it, out and about for in-town errands. It's a great little "town car." The trunk will hold five bags of groceries; it gets maybe 35 mpg (it is just a 600 cc motorcycle engine after all - you do have to rev it up quite a bit). And it's a great excuse for a little community social time.

The Bicycle Valet

Muscle Powered, a local pedestrian and bicycle advocacy group I'm active in, is staffing a bicycle valet at our downtown Farmers Market every Saturday through mid-October. Last weekend was one of my days to work it.

That means getting there early, getting the sunshade, table, handouts, and chairs set up, and then just hanging out and keeping an eye on the bicycles (a few baby strollers too) for people while they shop.

We've encouraged other non-profit groups in the area to sign up to "help" staff our valet booth and information display (when telling another group I'm active in about helping, one elderly lady thought I said bicycle ballet - which made for a rather confusing discussion until we sorted that out). Last weekend, a friend active in Parks for Paws, a group advocating for establishing a permanent dog park in town, joined me. We enjoyed visiting with each other, and friends and neighbors there to shop, listening to the live music, and telling shoppers about our respective projects.

Chinese Pea Pods and Carrots

Friday evening, 6 p.m. We're both tired, and we're hungry. Aries brought home some fish fillets, so I put them over a bed of chopped shallots and mushroom stems, splash on a bit of dry sherry, salt & pepper, and get them into a 350º oven to bake for 15 minutes. Toss the mushroom caps, with a bit of butter, into the skillet for a sauce for the fish. Now for a quick veg side dish.

Shading the pea roots with lettuce plants alongside (and the netting over the entire bed) has worked very well. My pea plants are still going strong into the middle of July. Peas and carrots sounds good. But this ain't yo' mama's little cubes of boiled-to-death veggies. Adapted for the microwave, this is a fast, healthy version of that old staple side dish (and makes for a great lunch, all by itself).

So I stir up the soy sauce glaze, and sprinkle some flour over the mushrooms in the skillet. The carrot slices cooking, I string the pea pods (picked this morning). Add some milk, salt & pepper, and a dash of paprika powder to the mushroom skillet; add peas to the carrots. The fish cooked, I dump the base of chopped shallots and 'shrooms and fish juices into the simmering skillet and give it a few more stirs. Toss the veggies with the glaze, and dish up the plates. A loaf of bread, and a bottle of wine (from Murphys California, just the other side of scenic Ebbetts Pass to the south) - gourmet dinner, on the table, in less than half an hour!


Chinese Pea Pods and Carrots (serves two)
¼ cup water
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 carrot, thinly sliced on the bias
1 cup of flat Chinese pea pods (fresh or frozen)
2 tablespoons walnut pieces
1 teaspoon butter or margarine

Stir together water, soy sauce and cornstarch in a small microwave-safe bowl. Micro-cook in 3 30-second increments, stirring after each time. It should be thickened, clear, and bubbly. Set aside.

Place carrots with a splash of water in covered casserole dish and micro-cook 2 minutes. Drain. Add pea pods, walnuts, and butter or margarine, cover and micro-cook another minute or two, until veggies are crisp-tender. Toss with the soy sauce mixture.

Braided, Tied, and Hung to Dry

After a couple of days outside in the shade, it was time to get my garlic harvest into shape to store. Usually, when garlic is almost ready to harvest, the leaf tips turn tan and the green tops flop over, right at the soil line. When that happens on a few of the plants, I'll bend the rest of the crop down too and pull the soaker hose away to let the soil dry out for a few days before digging up the bulbs.

This year, my garlic didn't do that. The tops just dried out and all turned tan at once, still standing upright, and earlier than usual. They're really nice-sized bulbs - I got five pounds of garlic from a 2' x 4' patch. But having to pull dry plants out of still-damp soil means I don't know how well they'll store this winter. When garlic is harvested with the tops still somewhat green out of dry dirt, as it cures the wrapping layers stay intact, protecting the cloves inside all winter and into the spring. But the outer layers were already so dry that they flaked away as the dirt dried, leaving less wrapping around the bulbs. I'll have to keep an eye on the bulbs later this season, and if they start feeling shrunken inside the wrapping I'll have to do something - probably make garlic powder by peeling and dehydrating what's left.

But I prefer fresh garlic, and Mother Nature meant for it to last through the winter to grow anew in early Spring. So I'll try curing and storing it as usual for now. I didn't want to chance rubbing away any more layers, so my garlic braid isn't quite as pretty and shiny-white as usual. I just cleaned off the dirt a bit and trimmed the roots with shears. The bulbs too dry to braid are in a basket on the counter to be used first. I use braided garlic from the bottom up in order to keep the decorative aspect nice as long as possible, so I started braiding with smaller bulbs, those with cloves starting to separate, and those with the least wrapping layers. I add in bulbs to the right, left, and center as room is available, keep braiding a bit more at the top, and then bend the braid to the back. Then, using a short length of string, I tie tightly close to the top bulbs (the stems will shrink as they dry), criss-cross wrap a few times and tie again higher up, and then knot a hanging loop. I'll leave the braid out in the open kitchen to cure for a couple of weeks, then move it into the cooler, darker pantry to store. Then, I'll just have to keep an eye on it, watching for withering. The two biggest, nicest bulbs, those with the long stems not part of the braid, I'm saving to break apart to plant come October.

To-Do List; Plus Urban Chickens

I dug my garlic last night. It's a bit earlier than usual, and it never did fall over like it usually does when it's getting ready to harvest. It just dried up, still standing in place. But the bulbs are nice, big ones and are now out on a rack in the shade drying out a bit. The cloves on some of the driest ones started to separate, and some even have little bulblets growing inside the stem just above the main bulb (never seen that before). Those won't store well, and can't be braided so they'll get used first. But I think after a day or two, the rest can still be cleaned and braided to finish curing. I do so like the look of a garlic braid in my pantry.

The whole month of June was cooler and wetter than normal here. Most of the salad greens are still doing great (the arugula, spinach, and a red leaf lettuce have bolted, starting to flower). I'm harvesting whole lettuce plants every other day - for me, for friends and neighbors, and some for the chickens too. The snap and snow peas are starting to produce, and the English peas should be ready soon, if they can withstand the July heat. The corn, beans, and squashes are up and just starting to grow; the fruiting bed is slow getting going.

I'll be spending the holiday weekend pretty close to home - I've got lots to do to keep me busy. Here's my yard & garden to-do list:

Get the netting over the Reliance grape - soon! if I want grapes, and raisins, this year.

Pick, pit, and process more pie cherries - I've got a bowlful dehydrating on screens in the sun, but the ones on the inside branches are almost ripe.


Pick raspberries - these are new plants I got from a friend last summer, so they haven't set much of a crop, but there are a few red ones down low on the branches that grew last year.

Cut and dry oregano and marjoram. I made that the subject of today's post, just written and posted, over on the SGF Co-op blog - which is why I'm still inside on the computer.

Pack more straw around potato plants, and fill in bare spots in the row with the last of the ones from last year sprouting in the cellar.

Thin fruit, head back overlong branches, and remove suckers on the fruit trees. I did the Freedom apple a couple of days ago - it hadn't been pruned for a couple of years. The Gravenstein should be thinned, and then the Liberty and Macintosh. The Asian pears and plums need it too. There are dead branches (borer damage) on the nectarine and peach trees that need to be removed - those trees aren't looking too good (they're about 20 years old), so it's time to start thinking about replacements.

Get the extra tomato and pepper plants off the deck table. I need to either call the neighbors that said they wanted them, plant them outside my fence as u-pick freebies, or put them out of their misery.

Weeding, weeding, and more weeding - I got around the brassicas and the early bed looks good. I just wear my Ipod set on Shuffle, sit cross-legged on a foam weeding pad, scoot it along the row, and hand-weed around each plant. It's easiest after the soaker hose has run the night before, and I have to admit, I do enjoy the satisfying crunch/pop when you pull a weed out by the roots.

But I can hardly see the beets and carrots (they need thinning too, as does the strawberry patch). The fruiting bed really needs it next, especially inside the Wall-o-Waters (the nice little micro-climate inside is also very conducive to weed growth). It will be easier if I get the WoW's off first and then just do it all at once. The corn could use a quick going-over with the hula hoe before I hill-up the plants, and I should run it around the squashes before they really take off. I can't believe some people actually grow purslane intentionally! Sure, it's tasty, but here it grows like the weed it is!

Oh! and one other little interesting item: urban chickens are now legal in Carson City! My birds have always been legal, since our lot is larger than an acre. I've been interviewed a couple of times regarding urban chickens though, and always helped push for changing the ordinance. Our City Supervisors did just that yesterday - allowing up to four hens or ducks (no roosters), or two pot-bellied pigs up to 150 pounds each (the mayor has one - he abstained from the vote) anywhere in the city. It's now safe for some chickens I know of to come out of hiding!

Short Season Tomatoes and Peppers

Summer's finally here, and daytime temps are reaching up towards the 90's. But high desert nights cool off down in the 40's in June, and the 50's all summer long. Add to that a frost-free season averaging only a little over 100 days, and crops like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and okra can be a bit difficult to grow here.

Forget vine-ripened Brandywine tomatoes - they'll still be green when the nights turn frosty in mid-September. I grow Early Girl for salads and sandwiches, and Sweet 100 for snacking, usually grazing on them right there in the garden. Both are hybrids, so no saving seeds, but I like the taste of each of them so buy a packet of seeds every few years. I also plant at least six paste tomato plants - my main crop for canning in many different guises. I started with an Amish Paste tomato, and about 20 years ago started saving seeds from the biggest, earliest fruit each summer. I consider it my own personal heirloom now - I call it CC (for Carson City) Paste. Many of my pepper plants are also grown from saved seeds - I just smash open one of the peppers hung to dry in various ristras. I haven't yet been able to save viable seeds from my eggplants or okra, so I buy seeds for them. Black Beauty eggplant and Clemson Spineless okra do well here.

I start all my fruiting plants from seed in late March to early April. The tomatoes get transplanted once, into deeper pots burying part of the stem, in early May. The plants are still quite small by the end of May, but I think that lessens the transplant shock and once into the garden they'll settle in quicker. I start hardening them off just before Memorial Day - setting them outside for longer periods each day, bringing them back in at night.

I rotate the type of plants - early, fruiting, vining, roots & brassicas, corn & beans - around through my five garden beds so that the type of bed will be the same every sixth year. Tomatoes, in the fruiting bed, and potatoes, in the roots bed, are in the same family however, so I try to put the tomatoes in a different part of the bed than where the potatoes were only a couple of years ago. In early June, it's time to get everything into the ground. Each of my 50' planting beds get an inch of compost and a light dusting of my all-purpose fertilizer mix (equal parts bone meal, blood meal, and greensand) every Spring, so I level the surface and lay out a soaker hose.

Into each planting hole, I also add some crushed eggshells (for calcium), some Epsom Salts (for magnesium), and a bit extra of the fertilizer mix. Then I get the hose, fill each hole with water, and start setting in each plant. Most of the plants are set in as deep as they were in their starting pots, but tomatoes will form roots on any part of their stem if it's buried. So I pinch off some of the lower leaves and set them in even deeper, leaving only the top couple of leaves above ground. More and deeper roots on the tomatoes help alleviate problems that our temperature swings and dry climate can cause.

Next come the cages. The little cone-shaped tomato cages really aren't big enough to support my tomatoes, but they work great for the peppers and eggplants. For the tomatoes, I've made cages out of welded hog wire fencing. For extra support (we do get some pretty good winds out of the west), each of the tomatoes gets a metal stake (2.5' for the determinate paste tomatoes, 6' for the indeterminate Early Girl and Sweet 100) pounded into the ground, and then a cage, the same diameter as a plastic five-gallon bucket, goes over the post and is secured with a twist-tie. And then, the secret for getting a decent harvest from these long-season plants: a Wall-o-Water (WoW) is placed over each cage.

The Wall-o-Waters are stored through the winter in a five-gallon bucket in the shed. Once they're in place over each caged plant, I sit on the up-ended bucket and start filling each little tube. It's tedious business, but a pistol-grip nozzle on the hose makes it easier. It's tricky to get the WoW's to stand up when you first start filling one. If you have new ones without leaks and no cages, put a five-gallon bucket upside down over the plant, the WoW around the bucket, fill tubes on alternating sides until all are full, and then pull the bucket out. Okra doesn't need the support of a cage when growing, so if I don't have enough cages I'll make sure the WoW's over the okra are ones without leaks (I clip on old clothespins to mark which ones have leaks - one pin means only a leak or two, two pins means they'll work best over the big tomato cages). I have a piece of smooth wire fencing in a perfectly-sized circle I can use to support the WoW when filling. It's even easier than using a bucket, but make sure all the wire ends are bent to inside the circle. Once filled, the WoW is self-supporting. But I've found having cages inside each one make things easier, keeps the ones that have leaks from falling over, and provides extra support in our winds.

The WoW's, even the ones with leaks, provide wind protection and a warm little micro-climate inside to get my little plants off to a good start. Around the Fourth of July, our nights are warmed up enough to get the WoW's off the plants. It takes two of us to lift them up and over, off the cages. The water inside is dumped onto the plants, and the WoW's hung up on the clothesline to drip-dry, then stacked up, rolled up, and stored away in their bucket.

Save Some Cherries for Me!

Frost nailed the blossoms on our sweet cherry tree this Spring, so no black cherries for us this year. We have a standard-size self-pollinating one. It's 25 years old, and I think it's called a Garden Bing Cherry. The aphids go really go for this tree though, at least until they die off in the summer heat. I've looked occasionally at other sweet cherry trees, but any Bings I've seen are either extra-dwarf or need a pollinator. I might have to try a Sweetheart Cherry - they're supposed to be a really late bloomer and self-fruitful as well. Anyone have any experience with them - especially in zone 5-6?

I also have a Montmorency pie cherry tree, and this year's crop is looking pretty good. They're just starting to color up - it'll be time to start picking in a few more days. So I needed to get the bird-scare tape out there. If you get the tape on the tree too early, the birds get used to it; too late and they'll clean-pick the tree just before the cherries get ripe (notice in the bottom photo: the earliest-ripening cherries, in the top of the tree getting the most sun, are already almost gone). Scare tape is a flexible shiny 1" wide tape; some red on one side and silver on the other, this particular roll is silver with holographic angles that flash different colors in the sun (beware: 8-year old neighbor girls find it fascinating - they'll be asking to steal the tape right off your tree).

I headed out to the tree with the tape and some scissors. The birds have started on the upper-most cherries - only bare pits left clinging to the branches. But I find it a bit odd that the ground underneath the tree is also littered with pits - birds don't usually drop the pits. Cutting long strips to flap and flash in the sun, I tie one end (with a loose overhand knot - I reuse the tape all summer, moving the pieces to other trees as their fruit ripens) to outside branches all around the tree. Then I duck under the branches, adding a few more strips hanging down the inside. I step back to see if there are any glaring tape-free sections. And am a bit startled to notice a ground squirrel, high up, clinging to a thin top branch, holding perfectly still. I've been out there at least 20 minutes - I can't believe he's been swaying over my head all this time.

He was still holding so still - not even blinking. I got a stick and reached up to tap him to make sure he was still alive. That was enough to scare him down out of there and off into the brush. I don't mind sharing my harvest - the birds will get the cherries above where the scare tape is, and there should be enough this year to put out the "free u-pick" sign for the neighbors too. But I've found that once ground squirrels (not cute fluffy-tailed tree squirrels - these are more like rats with scruffy tails) get a taste of something, they won't share with me. So I put the little plastic owl in the lowest crotch of the tree, hung a few mirrors on the bigger branches, and got out the box trap - time for greedy squirrels to go bye-bye (and since yesterday, I've "relocated" three to over by the creek away from any other houses - plenty of cover, natural food and water). Oh boy, cherry time! Dried (my favorite!), pie, flavored vinegar, and maybe even enough to try making some hard cherry cider?

Soaker Hoses Save Water

Risa, blogger at Stony Run Farm, posted her friend's Homage to Lizards poem in comments for the House Lizards post below - I like the imagery of her "lizard paparazzi". Chris left a tip on catching lizards - unfortunately, it involves shading them when they're lying in the sun, which wouldn't work for catching house lizards. Albert, the cat, must have heard my admonishments though, because the very next day he kept a lizard entranced in the bedroom until I could trap it. All the outside doors were closed, so this was one already in the house (hmmm - wonder how that happened). I used the empty bathroom wastebasket and got that one relocated outside too.

Melynda, over at Mom's Sunday Cafe, has noticed the soaker hoses in my yard and garden. She wants to conserve water in her garden, so asked for more information about using them. Since I manage to grow a pretty good garden in an area that averages 7" precipitation annually (and most of that comes as snow in winter), plus have a weak well (needs 35-40 minutes recharge time to fill 50 gallon tank), I probably have some tips and methods for others that need to make every drop count in their own gardens.

Spraying and sprinklers are extremely ineffective watering methods, especially with our hot, dry winds. Half the water ends up blowing away from the area you're trying to water, and a lot of the rest of it evaporates before getting to the roots of the plants. Soaker hoses keep the water where it's needed, at a rate the ground and the plants can absorb. By clustering plants with similar water needs, closely spacing vegetable plants to shade their own roots, and infrequent deep watering we manage to get by.

Using different lengths of soaker hoses gives me flexibility in how and where I put my plants. In my vegetable garden, I use free-form raised waffle beds. I saw no need for the expense of building structures for the beds - I just groom them into shape with a rake each Spring, after digging in the compost and before planting. The beds are in the same place year after year, and I walk only in the pathways, so the soil never gets compacted in the growing area. For ease of cultivating, the beds are a bit more than two rake-widths wide, with a single rake-width for the interior paths. I pull the edges up a bit above the planting area, dishing out the center, to help hold water when getting my seeds to germinate (the only time I use a hand-held nozzle). I then run a single 50' hose down the center of each bed (although this year, I'm experimenting with a double-hose set-up on my early bed to lessen heat stress and perhaps stretch the harvest out a bit longer).

The soil here is called DG - decomposed granite. What that really means is coarse sand with very little plant nutrient value. My garden beds get at least an inch of compost dug into them each Spring, providing nutrients plus helping to retain water. Light, frequent watering makes plants form shallow, spread-out root systems. I want my plants to make deep roots so they're better able to withstand the heat during July and August. So after the vegetable plants are up and growing, they only get watered every third or fourth day, for 8-10 hours at a time. The top inch of the soil may look dry, but checking a bit deeper shows plenty of moisture. I don't water straight from the house faucet - I can't take the chance of running the well dry and burning out the pump (it's 212' feet down - a bit hard to repair). Instead, I use a gravity-fed system run from a couple of tanks that are filled from the house faucet using a very low-flow restrictor (more on that in another post).

My system can easily handle 100' feet of soaker hose at a time. I don't like the restrictors included in new soaker hoses - I pull them out and use new rubber washers instead. Besides, using a gravity-fed system means my water pressure is quite low to begin with. If I were using water straight out of a city-house faucet, opening the faucet only 1/8 turn would provide sufficient pressure for a system like mine. The seeping moisture of soakers attracts birds and other wild creatures, so I water the vegetables, two beds at a time, all night long, and then switch over to hoses in the landscaping during the day (no use inviting trouble). Using a series of y-valves and a few 4-way manifolds, it's easy to change where the water goes.

By taking up my hoses in late fall and storing them out of the weather, they last for years. In the Spring, it's easier to get them placed where I want them if I first stretch them out in the sun to soften up a bit (a smaller 25' hose coils round and round in the square strawberry bed above). Just about all the gardens and landscaping (except the fruit trees) are on soakers. I'll write about watering the orchard in a later post.

No More House Lizards!

The cat brought in another live lizard a couple of days ago. I heard him mumbly-meowing in the living room, went to see what was the matter, and was just in time to see him spit out the lizard and away it went.

I saw it once yesterday, running across the living room; and then could hear some scuffling behind my desk last night while at my computer. Then, this morning when I sat down and reached over to turn on the computer, the lizard was looking at me from atop the computer tower. Ack! I startled and so did he - he ran over the top of the computer and back down behind it. I could peer over the top and see him back down there amid the cords and dust bunnies, but had no way to reach him. Later, this afternoon, I saw him a couple more times up on the guest bed but wasn't fast enough to trap him (too nervous to pick him up bare-handed - I flinch and he's gone again). But with persistence (buoyed by the fear that a lizard is going to run across my face in my sleep), I managed to turn the coffee can I keep on my sewing machine as a scrap catcher into a lizard catcher - trapping him atop the pillows, slipping a magazine underneath, and gently transporting him out the front door. No more live cat toys in the house! Do you hear me, Albert?

Dad's Apron?

I was back in Colorado earlier this year, visiting my mom. She was going through the basement, garage, and closets, getting things together for a garage sale. She told me to look through what she was planning to sell, to see if there was anything I wanted. As a kid, I vaguely remembered seeing this silly old apron, hanging in the broom closet way back when. I now have it hanging in my pantry. I don't really remember anyone in particular wearing it, but just seeing it brings a smile to my face.

I always tell people I really did grow up in a 1950's sit-com family. Mom quit teaching school when I was born and stayed home until the baby, five kids later, started school. Dad worked, Mom did the shopping, laundry, and cooking, us girls did the dishes and cleaned house, the boys mowed the lawn. But Mom didn't wear aprons like my grandmothers did. If she was canning or cooking something splattery, she might wear one of those backwards shirt-type smocks, but not a tied around the waist-type apron.

Dad would cook on camping trips and outside on the charcoal grill, but didn't do much cooking inside the house. I don't remember if he ever really did wear this apron. The one thing I do remember though, is that sometimes on a weekend morning, wearing pajama pants and a t-shirt, he'd cook pancakes for us kids and let Mom sleep in. That was something different, something special, a treat - having Dad in the kitchen. Now that I'm older and think about it, after taking care of five kids all week, getting to sleep in must have really been a treat for my mom too.

High-Desert Choi

I work in the garden; I volunteer in my community; I get out and about in the area walking and hiking. I take photos and write blog entries in my head just about every day. But lately, when I'm back at my computer, I end up checking e-mail, playing games, and surfing the 'net instead of writing about my adventures and observations. Then, I feel guilty it's been so long since I posted. Do I try to play catch-up, or start fresh from today? The decision paralyzes me, and another day goes by without a post.

I really want to get back into the habit of writing here. I enjoy it; I enjoy the feedback; I like to feel I'm contributing some of the things I've learned. I have managed to get something written each time it's my day to post on the Co-op blog. Right now, I've got a bumper crop of lettuce and greens (netting that bed really did the job), so today I wrote about my latest kitchen treat: green smoothies.

This is the photo I used on that post. It's of the only bok choi I've found that won't bolt to seed when our days get long and our high-desert temperatures shift into summer-mode overnight. I started the big plants inside and set them out, but have more little ones seeded in place alongside the peas ready to move as I start harvesting the biggest ones. It's called Joi Choi, and really worth searching out (I often have to order the seeds online) if you like making summertime stir-frys out of the garden.

Scattered Thoughts, Scattered Showers

Eleven-thirty a.m. and the rain drove me inside. I was out trying to get my "fruiting" garden plants set in - my tomatoes, peppers, chiles, eggplants, and okra. Nights are still quite chilly, so I haven't seeded the corn, beans, or squash yet, but the fruiting plants will be protected until the Fourth of July so they should be ok (as long as I can get everything done later this afternoon - the rain doesn't last too long at a time so I jump out and in as necessary).

I've been keeping busy with various meetings and social gatherings lately. My Soroptimist Club had a Bunco Night, with wine and desserts. Most of us had never played before, but it didn't take long to catch on. It was really fun. Our fiscal year ends June 30th, so as Treasurer I've also been busy with Budget Meeting preparations and our annual dues billing.

Then, the Democratic Women's Club had a Games Night, with potluck supper. That too, was lots of fun - I ended up in a group playing a strange old board game about the Titanic sinking. You had to maneuver about the ship gathering up passengers, food and water, then get to a lifeboat, and then to the rescue ship, while the other players were trying to steal your supplies and the ship sinking kept cutting off routes about the ship. Interesting what games people invent.

Saturday, a group of home-based artists south of here held open houses. A friend is looking for more art for her home, so I went along with her to check them out. I was more interested in seeing others' gardens and studios. It made for an interesting afternoon, but neither of us saw anything that really reached out and grabbed us.

Lastly, Aries took a week's vacation time. Our home is supposed to be barn red with terra cotta trim, but the last paint we used faded so badly that it's been more of a fuchsia for the last few years. Aries has always hated it, so when he saw exterior paint on sale, he decided to repaint the house and outbuildings. Little did he realize that we'd also see rare, scattered afternoon thundershowers all week too. So he gets up early, paints a bit, and then hopes it has time to dry before it rains. So far, so good. He's off to Reno for beer making supplies now. The rain has stopped for a bit, so I'm headed back out to the garden.

Poultry Update

Tweedit, our guinea hen, has been patiently setting on her nest out front since the middle of April. It's way past time for them to have hatched though. So a few days ago, when she was off the nest to eat, we picked up the eggs. She came back to the nest and was calling the rest of the afternoon, but that evening Aries went out front and walked her back down to the coop and she went right in. All three guineas are now flocking together once again.

For the last three years, both Tweedit and Missus have brought in clutches, but it's looking like no keets this year. Missus is Grey's mate (that's Grey, above, in defensive papa mode); Tweedit was the only survivor from Missus' first clutch, hatched in late September four years ago. This Spring, our neighbor found Missus' nest in his shed and threw all her eggs away. They each might lay and set on another clutch late in the summer, but it's hard to raise the babies when the weather starts getting colder so if we catch them at it we'll clean out the nests too.

The chickens are now spending their days inside the pen instead of free-ranging. It's easier to find all the eggs (9-12 a day now) when they're in the nest boxes, and it saves a lot of destruction to my landscaping. PheasantFace and Junior have been flying out, but they've pretty much stayed out of the flower beds and the garden, and are both laying in one spot up by the garage, so I haven't tried to clip their wings. The guineas fly out first thing in the morning, but they prefer to range out in the sagebrush. Last year's hens, the ones raised with Coach, our bantam rooster, are looking pretty rough. He's been getting on them so much he's taken most of the feathers off their backs. I saw an ad in a poultry magazine for little protective chicken jacket/vests that fit across their backs and then velcro around their chests. I might have to make some for Coach's girls if he doesn't let their feathers grow back.

This year's new girls, Flopsy and Mopsy the Buff Orpingtons, and Cottontail and Penny the Red Stars, have now adjusted to life in the coop. They're lowest in the pecking order, so they're always on the move, staying out of everyone's way. They're the last ones in at night - taking advantage of everyone else going in to get an extra bit of food from the feed box.

We have a routine around here. Aries gets up early, so he goes down to the coop to open it up in the morning. We'll often let the flock out to free-range a bit in the evening, and then I'm the one that makes sure everyone is back inside before closing it up for the night. Last week, Aries had gone to work and I was sitting out on the deck later. I could hear Coach crowing non-stop, one right after another. Finally, I went down there to see what was going on. Aries had forgotten to open up the coop that morning. Everyone came piling out when I opened the door, and since the guineas were bullying everyone away from the food and water I went ahead and opened the pen gate too.

As I started back up to the house, I called to Boris, our hound dog, to get away from the nest box hatches and follow me. He wouldn't, despite my yelling at him to leave the chickens alone. He still just stood staring at the nest boxes, so I went back down to see what was so interesting that he wouldn't leave. One of the little Buffys was standing in the lower nest box - I figured she must have been hiding out from everyone, trapped inside the coop like that. But she wouldn't come out when I opened up the hatch - I had to get down and pick her up and set her outside. When I did, I noticed Cottontail had wedged herself headfirst in between the nest box and the wall, with the tip of one wing up around the edge of the box. Poor thing!

I managed to get her wing back next to her body, and then had to get inside the coop and crawl under the roosts to get my hand back in there to where she was. I had to reach underneath her to lift her up enough to pull her back out of there. If her feet touched the ground, as soon as I'd get her a bit backward she'd try to push forward again. I finally got her up and out, but her wing got scraped up pulling her backwards out of there. So I took her in the house to check her over, spraying liquid bandage over the scraped wing to protect it until it could heal. Within an hour she was out with her buddies like nothing had happened. I'm just glad Coach, Flopsy or Mopsy, and Boris made sure I noticed something was wrong.

Where Have I Been?

After spending a week visiting Mom in Colorado, without computer access, I got back with one day to myself. I spent Friday doing laundry, a bit of grocery shopping, catching up on mail, and writing about tomato problems for my turn on the Simple Green Frugal Co-op.

Saturday, I was up and out the door early enough to catch a hot-air balloon trying to land north of the garage. I was headed over to pick up Donna and then we were going to work a display booth for Muscle Powered in the Health Fair section of the Oodles of Noodles street fair in Dayton, Nevada - about 20 miles east.

May is Bike Month, and Muscle Powered had put together lots of events the following week for Bike to Work Week, so it was perfect timing to get the word out to lots of people. Probably not everyone has to contend with our afternoon winds - the Washoe Zephyr - but if you're putting together an outside information booth you might take note of my bungee cord set-up. Originally an idea from my mom for restraining a camping tablecloth, it works really well for keeping handouts in place and still easily available. Large bungee cords are wrapped width-wise around the display table and hooked together underneath. During a wet Earth Day street fair a few years ago, I had a piece of clear plastic the same size as the table I just tucked under the end bungees. Items were visible and it was easy to just reach underneath the plastic to pick up anything. It sure beats chasing litter down the street.

Sunday morning I was up even earlier. I spent the next six days working the early-early morning to mid-afternoon shift as a shuttle coordinator for the Intel Science and Engineering Fair in Reno. The tourism destination management company I work on-call for was manning all shuttle bus pick-up areas, back and forth from the hotels to the convention center from 5:30 a.m. until 11 p.m. plus all outside tours. The sagging economy and the proliferation of Tribal Casinos in California means tourism has really dropped in my area, so I was glad to get the chance to pick up some hours.

According to our pre-Fair briefing, about 1,600 high school students from 50 countries participated. Counting parents, teachers, and judges, around 6,000 people stayed the week. Four million dollars in scholarships were awarded. About 20% of the kids already have patents on their projects and inventions (I was talking to one of the judges - lots of major corporations send representatives to this fair. I was thinking "how nice, they're looking to recruit these kids when they get out of school." Wrong - they're there to steal ideas - thus the need for patents).

After a long week, I got home Friday just in time to get my things together for a weekend on Lake Tahoe's north shore.

Our friends own a time-share in a little resort up there. It's a funky little place - this building was originally built in the late 1950's as athlete housing for the 1960 Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley, plus little old-Tahoe cabins. The time-share management hosts a pre-summer season work weekend - feeding us on Saturday and Sunday in exchange for work raking the beach, painting, flower planting, and various other fix-up chores. My friends often attend, and this year had reserved a two-bedroom unit so asked if I'd like to go with them (Aries was working until Sunday).

I rode with Larry to pick up Krista at the airport in Reno that evening, and then up to North Shore via the Mount Rose Highway. The summit of the two-lane road between Reno and Tahoe is almost 9,000 feet. The ski areas are all closed for the season, but there was still snow in the trees alongside the road and covering the mountains above. We had a nice dinner out in Tahoe City, and I spent all day Saturday and then Sunday morning setting out annual flowers and working on the landscaping.

Aries came up Sunday morning on his motorcycle. He pitched in working for a while too. He brought my helmet and jacket, so after lunch I let our friends take my things back to Carson and Aries and I took the long way home. We went west and then south around the Lake, stopped for a while above Emerald Bay, and from South Shore headed south away from the Lake over Luther Pass. At Hope Valley, we turned east to head down the canyon. At the bottom, as we came around the corner from the canyon out onto the sagebrush valley, the temperature increased a good 20 degrees - it was over 90F! I was so glad I'd missed most of the heat up in the mountains all weekend. And glad to finally have some time at home again too! I've had lots of things to catch up on around the house and out in the garden - more on that later.

Home Again

Miss me? I've missed all of you. I just spent a week in Denver visiting my Mom. She doesn't (didn't, anyway) have internet access, so my only time online was a couple of 15-minute sessions at the local library - just long enough to check my email. But all five of us siblings (I also have a Colorado Brother and a California Brother) had pitched in together and bought Mom a new laptop for Mother's Day. Colorado Sister lives near Mom, and California Sister flew in for a visit the same day I flew out, and she brought the new laptop (and even put together a personalized how-to manual). So in between our flights we three sisters went to lunch with Mom and gave her her present - with a new email address already set up for her and all her contacts notified. California Sister will spend her time there getting Mom's new internet access all set up and give her some internet lessons. I think she'll really enjoy it once she learns how to maneuver in cyberspace (and that means there will be home internet access next time I visit).

It was a wonderful little get-away for me - the perfect little space on my calendar, spent just hanging out with Mom and Colorado Sis. I walked with Mom when she played in her 9-hole golf league one day (great view of Red Rocks Amphitheater from a high point on the golf course - top tiers of the seats visible between the two big rocks on the left, Lookout Mountain beyond),

and spent another day with my sister out geocaching up on Lookout Mountain (even nicer view of the Rockies from the parking lot for Buffalo Bill's grave).

Now I'm back home again, with bunches of things to do in the garden and my calendar booked solid for the next two weeks. The lilacs are in bloom, and so are the last of the fruit trees - the apples and the pie cherry. The netting is still intact over the garden, and my peas and lettuces are coming up. Guinea Tweedit is still sitting on her nest out front - I haven't heard any peeping out there yet, but it should be any day now. It was my day to post on the SGF Co-op blog. My Colorado Sister has had problems with blossom-end rot on her tomatoes, so I thought I'd write about Troubleshooting Tomatoes for her over there. And with that, I think I've done enough writing for today.