Hydra's Heights and Fresh Garbanzos. - Sunday 5/31/2009

So of course, the first time I decide not to accompany Hydra on his hike, he goes and scales his mountain! That's him waving his crutch above his head after calling me on the cell phone to alert me to his feat.

Boys cannot be trusted!



Tomato and artichoke progress, just so you know.


I just heard Evan Kleiman sing the praises of fresh garbanzo beans on Good Food recently, and what should I find at my local Vallarta market?

The very thing I was looking for!



There are 1-2 beans per pod. Usually one.

They aren't beige. They're green!


See them in there? They're yummy fresh or steamed and drizzled with some good olive oil. On the radio, they said that people roast them over grills.

The pods are fairly tender, but not tender enough to eat. Not bad shelling... I pressed on them till they popped open like little balloons and then took out the beans.

Floral Derangement - Saturday 5/30/2009

I finally planted the rose bush we bought last weekend in the planter Hydra built when he built the wall a few years ago. Wow, it's a gorgeous color, huh?



African Daisies on the street side of the house. One of the plants died. Why? There was enough water. Sigh.


The star jasmine smells great.

Right about here, I got some sort of gunk on the lens. Boo!



The moon bird feeder.

Sun birds also welcome.


What a lovely profusion of star jasmine, huh?

How to Become a Redneck in 4 1/2 Hours - Monday 5/25/2009

A) Put your hair up in a ponytail.

B) Go out and do a bunch of yard work on a sunny day and remember to put sunscreen everywhere but the back of your neck.

I don't know why it always seems to take me till the end of a long weekend to think of starting a physically demanding project, but it often does. I decided to tear out the two rose bushes at the far end of my herb garden. They were here when we moved in and I've never liked them.

The blooms aren't particularly pretty, only last a couple of days on the bush, and can't be cut and brought inside-- all the petals fall off.

The first one came out pretty easily, but look at the trunk on this guy! It was something else digging this out.

There were 1-2 inch think roots running all through that end of the garden and even down to the end closest to the back door. It was a lot more work than I expected. I started at 9:30 in the morning and finished getting the roots out, digging in garden soil and planting until a little after 2pm. Don't know about you, but when I get started on something like this, I have a hard time stopping till it's really done.




I did pause, though, once I finished wrestling with the roots, to clip a little fresh sage, rosemary and thyme and put a pork tenderloin in the oven. I was working up an appetite!


I thought I took more photos of the progress. This is after I added in the fresh topsoil.

Man, I had a lot of clean up to do. I'd had most of the tools out of the shed to work on those roots: shovel, trowel, long-handled and short-handled garden forks, small leaf rake, hoe, edger (which didn't really work), flat blade shovel, long handled clippers, hand clippers.

Every time I went into the house for water I realized just how aerobic my efforts were. I had to catch my breath in order to drink. I kept thinking about my pal Los Angelista who was running the L.A. Marathon today (so exciting!) I think I would have felt about as beat up if I'd tried to run the first three miles with her!



See the rainbow in the sprinkler water?

I didn't mind getting wet while adjusting the sprinkler heads. Whew!

All the herbs are in! Good sized parsley, sage and thyme (I never knew how good thyme was till I started growing my own and using it.) Small chives, parsley and basil (I think) that I started from seed are in the little planter.

I also planted three cucumbers that I started from seed. I'm not sure any of them will take. They look really tender and vulnerable, and it gets pretty hot out there. K warns that they take a lot of space, so I guess if only one survives, I'll be okay!

Still didn't get the new red rose bush or the lavender in. I'm not sure where I want to put them!

And I think I want to get some of those stacking brick colored blocks to put around the edges of the herb bed. Or at least dig the bricks that line it out of the grass.

Sundry to Hydra: You got your grass on my dirt!

Hydra to Sundry: You got your dirt on my grass!

Not exactly a Reeses Cup.

Great day. I feel accomplished.

And tired.

Sundry Drive - Sunday 5/3/2009

We decided to drive out to the Rock Inn in Lake Hughes for lunch on Sunday.

There's a better photo of the whole place at their website. Apparently, they've stopped calling it Harley's Rock Inn, and are playing up the historic aspect of this 80+ year old hotel and restaurant. I wish I had taken a shot of all the gleaming Harley's and Harley-wanna-be bikes out front of the restaurant.

It's pretty loud on a Sunday afternoon. Wonder how much sleep one's likely to get in the hotel on a Saturday night. There is really not much else to this little town, except Papa's Market across the street.


Love the backs on these bar stools. It's quite a crowd. Lots of middle-aged weekend bikers mixed with real mildly alarming bikers.

Hydra walks into a biker bar wearing the Detroit Redwings hat his cousin brought him from Michigan. There's a hockey game on the tube in the corner. Yep, you got it: Detroit Redwings v. Anaheim Ducks in Stanley Cup playoffs!

There's a heavily tattooed, drunk, serious biker dude behind us yelling nearly incoherantly from time to time, but apparently in synchronization with what's going on in the hockey game. It takes us a while to figure out he's rooting for the Redwings. Whew.


I like this elderly lady sitting by the window reading a book and drinking coffee. I expect to be that woman when I am her age.


On the way back, we stop to look at the new electricity transmission lines going in. I think these are going to help get the energy being created by the wind farms in Tehachapi down to the folks in Santa Clarita and beyond. The pieces look like giant tinker toys.

Hydra admits that he has seen pieces of these things being airlifted in by helicopter from his commute up Bouquet Canyon and Vasquez Canyon roads. Harumph! Why was I not alerted sooner!?


The idyllic Pitchfork llama ranch.



This llama, not wanting to be sold and carted away from paradise, heads for the brush.



Back at home after running errands, I return to the scene of the yard work. Tore out or moved old straggling African Daisies and planted new ones.


Added new soil and rearranged the rocks. These will fill in nicely through the summer.


Added a pot of Gerbera daisies and some geraniums to the front porch. A little color in amongst the succulents. Also started cucumber and herb seeds in one of those peat-pot starter terrariums.

Okay, now a plea for help. Has anyone ever had a pair of this style of grass shears that actually works? I've bought probably 3 pairs in the past 8 years and none of them have done much more than crimp the grass. Do you know of a brand that works?

Yard Goods - Saturday 5/2/2009

Why do I always forget to take a before photo? This is the middle photo.

Trust me, I spent about half of the 3 1/2 hours I spent on the yard was right here. I took out most of the rocks in order to get the neighbors' leaves out from between them. And then, yes, I put them back.

Tomorrow I want to replace the African daisies with fresh ones.

I enjoy digging, planting, even weeding. I am less enthusiastic about cleaning up afterward.

The whole thing of sweeping a sidewalk is kind of mystifying. I mean, isn't the whole point of the outdoors to have a place to keep your dirt?



I picked up 249 apricots from the back yard. The other day I picked up 118. There are maybe 3 dozen left on the branches.

Big winds in spring: boo! hiss!

Bloomin' Lovely - Friday 5/1/2009

The mini roses are back.

Self-Watering Planters II + Herb Gardening - Sunday 4/26/2009

Went to the College of the Canyons Farmer's Market in the morning, but forgot my camera. Sigh. Bought some fresh free range eggs from a farm located in Acton! (Maybe they'll let me stop by and pick up from them directly without having to drive 20 miles to the market.) Also went a little nuts with fresh herbs and veggies.

Ready to load with dirt. The pipe is so you can add water to the reservoir after it's filled with dirt.


Layered in the potting mix, adding water as I went along.



Added the weed-proof plastic, which also helps reduce evaporation, which is a big problem out here in the heat of summer. (I'm talking 110+ degrees now and again.)

Getting the plants planted through the plastic was one of the more tricky parts of this project. The hardest part was cutting the tubs down and cutting out the lids, just because the material is not terribly stable and it kept binding up the jigsaw.


Four kinds of tomatoes! And that's an artichoke in the pot in the middle. Not sure how much the artichoke will like being in a pot, but I'm gonna give it a shot.






The rosemary got way out of hand while I wasn't paying attention! Also moved the savory (in the foreground) to another part of the yard, since I don't really use it much. The organo? There's no getting rid of it, even if we wanted to. Thank goodness Hydra uses it in his spaghetti sauce!


After.

I know, it's not all that pretty and it needs more shaping, but after an hour with the hedge trimmers and hand clippers, this is where I needed to stop. Now there's room for more herbs!




I think I may have harvested almost enough rosemary to season the fingerling potatoes I bought at the farmer's market this morning!


Fresh sage, parsley and thyme. The first bunches of these I planted 8 years ago are either gone or too woody to be of much use.

Hey, I should write a song about my herb garden....


Hydra pointed out the way this ornament was catching the evening light as I finished up my day's work. Much to his credit, bum knee and all, he trimmed all the grass in the yard, which is a job I most sincerely do not enjoy.


End of day treat: watercress soup. Which is actually not all that great as it turns out--a bit of a bitterish aftertaste, but it's what's for lunch this week. I used some of that chicken stock from Friday. When else am I going to get enough watercress for soup with leftovers for salads for $1.50?

Also had an amazing salad with leaf lettuce, sugar snap peas, tomatoes, celery, Persian cucumbers, basil, dill (it's sooo good in a salad!), a little bleu cheese, tarragon vinegar and olive oil. Crunch!

Sunday Sick Day Outside - Sunday 4/12/2009

Well, it could be worse.

It could be raining.

I woke up feeling lousy again today. The Never-Ending Bronchitis, plus the long day yesterday. Hydra was also seriously under the weather on Saturday, too, but there was celebrating to be done that involved, food, chocolate and assembling jigsaw puzzles and we weren't about to miss it.

We had a great time, but about 40 minutes into our two-hour drive home, we had a call letting us know that I'd left my antibiotics prescription there.

Oh no. We'd left the house at 7:15 a.m. and didn't get home until a little after 9 p.m.

Anyway, this is the view from the little swinging bench we put between the house and the slope that leads to the open hillside. We call this the back of the house. We also call the back yard the back of the house.

We have no sides.


This is taken from my reclined position. Very good advice from Hydra to get outside to continue my convalescence. It lifts the spirits.




He busied himself cutting the lawn and cleaning up the shrubs and stuff while I hung out with the lady bugs in the vinca. I've never seen as many flying lady bugs as I did today. I wasn't even sure what they were at first.


Giant (overexposed) California poppy in the back yard. He's not really threatening it, just showing how big it is.



How is it that California poppies are so fragile that you can't pick them and bring them inside, and yet they have the strength to fold up at night to protect themselves?

I really love this about poppies. Poppies have good boundaries.

If you've gotten this far, here's a reward. Or a punishment. It depends on how much you like amateur poetry.

Still writing a poem a day for the month of April. Here's today's :

From Where I Lie

Mint and vinca mingling on the slope
The old table, decaying
The shed waiting for paint
The tilled soil waiting for herbs
The grape vine sprouting
The tip of my shoe resting
on the far end of the sheltered bench
The book
The water glass, sweating
The cedar, the willow,
the apricot, peach and plum showing promise
The lady bugs defying gravity,
orange asterisks on the breeze
The geranium sprouting from the nest
of last year’s bloom
The round brown bird of unknown origin
who nevertheless enjoys
a good reputation in our back yard
for bug consumption and dancing
The man who told me, rightly,
to rest outside.

NaPoWriMo : No Fooling! - Tuesday 4/1/2009

I am pretty sure that I take a photo of the gazanias in the midst of the ice plant every year. Just such a lovely beginning to spring. Both of these plants were in the yard when we bought the house.


The apricot tree was also here. See the little apricots? They're about the size of green olives right now.


Dodger and I went out to the table on the deck to write. We spent a lot of time listening to all the birds visiting in the yard, and even spotted a (fairly unusual) bright orange Oriole in the willow!

I'm participating in NaPoWriMo with some of my online friends. What, you ask?

It's National Poetry Writing Month! If you want to join in and would like some inspiration, go to Read Write Poem, where the bloggers offer daily poetry exercises for the month of April. There's still time to catch up! (Post a poem here, if you like!)

Believe me, writing a poem a day for 30 days is way saner than writing a novel in the same amount of time. For long-form writers like me, it's a nice way to focus on brevity and have a little fun. No pressure for me to write good ones, either. I'm not a poet.

I'm not going to put up all my poems, but since you're here, here's the first one.

April 1:

Bird Song

Within the unbudded honeysuckle,
sparrow peeps pleas to his best girl.
Finch thrums passion
beak to beak in the apricot tree.
Fragrant rosemary dark
harbors dove’s croon and coddle.
Oriole dances saucily on the willow branch
tail left, tail right, step step.
Quail whistles wittily from the juniper.
Raven glides close upon his love’s glossy crown,
folds wing over wing as they rise over the greening hill.
Me? I hum Beatles tunes
beneath your berry pie kitchen window.

Oops! It's Spring Already? - Wednesday 3/4/2009

Apparently the apricot thinks so!

I didn't get around to pruning again this year. The fruit trees are a little spindly.

Hyrda's Big Project

We started breaking up the branches and twigs in the back yard Friday night (from the downed tree) and filled a big trash container and six or seven big bags.

I sawed up some of the medium branches that evening. Today Hydra bought a chain saw and got to work on the bigger branches.


Wow, what a lot of work! That's a 4 pound hammer. I tried splitting one log and it was about all I could do to get through it.

Gonna get the IcyHot ready!

Kitty and I were shopping in Palmdale all afternoon. We were tired too.

A Mighty Wind

It sounded like someone was throwing gravel at our bedroom all night. In the morning, there were branches down and the tomatoes were knocked over.

Well, the wind wasn't done with us.


After several big windy slams, the whole house shook...and our big shade tree broke and the top half fell on the house!






Hydra had the day off. Not so much after all. He spent most of the day on the roof, cutting up branches. The ladder kept being blown down, so he was at my mercy.



Now both the back yard and the front yard are full of branches and we're down our best shade tree. Sigh.