Photos
Peeping Pride of Madeira
About a month ago, my wife said she felt like this Pride of Madeira (Echium candicans) was looking at her so I gave it bottle-cap eyes. I went outside yesterday morning and noticed that our peeping friend had his hair color changed courtesy of the recent freeze. Very stylish.
Keyhole Garden Progress – February 8, 2020
Temperatures have been well below freezing at night for the past week, but you wouldn't know it by looking at the keyhole garden. It continues to produce like there's no tomorrow. We've been harvesting lettuce and cilantro all week and it just seems to grow right back. Garlic, broccoli and cabbage are thriving as well.
Sunset on February 4, 2020
Really cold Alaskan air is parked over us dropping temperatures into the 20's overnight again. But the cold skies make for some really spectacular sunsets. Here is last night's sunset from the upper garden looking west out over the greenhouse.
Winter Lettuce and Peas
A quick peak under the row cover shows that my lettuce and peas are doing just peachy despite that it was in the low 80's a couple days ago and now it's dipping into the 30's overnight.
Sunset on February 3rd
Saturday, the day before yesterday, the high was 83 degrees. Tonight it's going to bottom out in the 20's. Welcome to February in San Diego. These huge temperature swings wreak havoc on the garden, but, dang... they make for beautiful sunsets.
Keyhole Garden Progress – February 1, 2020
80 degree heat earlier this week forced me to actually water the garden. It's quite full now. Time to start harvesting some of that lettuce and cilantro for Super Bowl snacking tomorrow.
Orange Chicken
Jonesy the rooster standing in an orange tree pretending he's a wild jungle chicken.
What to do with a Cherimoya?
A while back I bought a Cherimoya (Annona cherimola) sapling from a local exotic fruit nursery. At the time, the plant guy said it probably wouldn't produce fruit because it needed some sort of month to pollinate it. Fast forward to today and the tree is doing quite well and it has lots of fruit on it (moths must be nearby). A few days ago it started dropping fruit. They're the size of softballs and quite hard. I swear I almost got a concussion from one that dropped on my head. I'm not really sure what to do with them. [keep reading...]
Still Battling the Aloe Eater
Despite my best efforts to trap the little sucker, the aloe devouring gopher continues his reign of terror. I just came out into the yard to see that he's taken out the last large aloe vera in the bed. This means war.
Tithonia Sunshine Bouquet
My Mexican Sunflower (Tithonia diversifolia) had grown tall and leggy in the shade of the trees in the upper yard over the past few months. It was basically like looking at a forest of sticks with flowers 15 feet in the air, so I whacked the plants down to a couple feet tall. Now it's like looking at a hedge row of sticks, but it'll be green and leafy again by spring. In the meantime, my wife has some nice bouquets of bright yellow flowers around the house.