Photos
Thanksgiving Prep – Sweet Potatoes
Short of the turkey, everything for our family's Thanksgiving feast is grown here at The Acre. It takes a few days to harvest everything and bring it all together, so we always start with the stuff we need to dig up. This morning is was sweet potatoes, red and white varieties. This is way more than the four of us will eat, so we'll store the small ones to plant is spring, and share the extra big ones with our neighbors.
The Passion Fruit Ate My Patio Cover
Went up on the roof yesterday to clear the rain gutters and finally got a look at how the passion fruit had grown over the summer. It's hard to believe the giant green monster that's eating my patio cover was a tiny plant in a 4-inch pot not too long ago. Obviously it's quite happy where it is.
Last Spider of the Season
All summer the garden is thick with big, fat orb weaver spiders. By mid-autumn, they're all but gone. Here's one of the few left weaving a web backlit by the sun setting over the Pacific.
Video: A final walk through the hanging gourd garden
Winter is well on it's way and the wind and weather are taking their toll on the hanging gourd garden. Here's a final walk through the garden before it's gone for another year.
Tom Thumb Peas
The near freezing weather has ended pretty much everything in the veggie garden but these Tom Thumb peas. The plants are tiny, but they kick out a whole lot of peas.
Video: A Fallen Agave
The first real rains of the season blew down this 20 foot tall agave flower the woodpeckers had stuffed with acorns.
Out with the Old
The Halloween decorations from the front yard sitting around on the bench waiting to go back into storage. I wonder what they're talking about.
Lemongrass Then and Now
From the "If you water it, it will grow" file comes this lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus) rescued from the dry herb garden. In March I planted a small, mostly dead clump. In June it began to show life. By October it ruled its section of the tropical garden
A Fungus Among Us
This odd looking thing popped up out of some leaf litter yesterday. It's slightly squishy like a mushroom, but it doesn't look like any one I've ever seen before. Anyone have an idea what it might be?
Gasteria Ellaphiae
Gasteria Ellaphiae is an interesting succulent that does quite well in light-to-medium shade as long as the soil is kept warm and dry. This plant was a thumb-sized pair of leaves and no roots last spring, but, as you can see from the photo, it now has half a dozen new leaf clusters that can be separated into new plants.