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Easter Greetings

31 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by ninagarden in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

annuals and perennials, chickens, easter grass, eggs and chicks, plants

fountEaster Greetings! Here are some photos from this morning. We had fun with our fake eggs and chicks.

Why does it seem like everything is blooming today?  Even the Geranium Maderense is blooming for the first time!

henreitt a and chickThe coral bells are blooming…coral bellsAnd my favorite new flower for the hill, Bill Wallis Geranium or Geranium Pyrenacium is fabulous and nativizing. I have baby blue geraniums growing all along my rock wall in the clay soil (with hardly any water.) I love this plant. Thank you Annie’s Annuals (and perennials!)

photo (117)We had some fun with our chickens and some baby “chicks”

hen and chickThey actually hated them and ran away.  Then we added these eggs for our neighbor who is collecting them today. Surprise, Chuck!

photo (110)egg boxThe only sad thing is that our puppy is sick and at the kennel so here is a photo of her. Wish her a speedy recovery! We miss you, Cleo, but at least we didn’t have to worry about you eating chocolate and Easter grass!

photo

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Spring Flowers

21 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by ninagarden in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Last night the two kids and two dogs and I took a first day of spring walk. My daughter wanted to bring her chicken but I wouldn’t let her. Anyway, I felt we should commemorate the Equinox!

The first day of spring is a happy day for the gardener!

Yet here on the Point, we are in the gloom of spring fog. I see the edge of sun on the horizon, and think I will have to leave the house and drive to get some sunshine. (I haven’t seen the sun since Sunday when we were in Alpine at a friend’s house.) Living here in spring fog begins to wear on me after a while. And it’s only just the start. This could last into June.

Despite this gloom, which isn’t anything like the weather in the other parts of the country so I know you are saying “Geez, get over it!”, I have some beautiful flowers (and a few pets) in my garden. Here are a few photos from last weekend:

ranuncphotophoto (108)

swpee

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February Planting with No Coffee

25 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by ninagarden in chickens, compost, dog, garden, rats, Uncategorized, vegetables

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

chickens, garden, gardening, roses, vegetables

Other than the travesty of our coffee maker breaking, the week has been off to a pretty good start.

Warning—this blog was written entirely without coffee.

Even though it was not a perfectly sunny weekend, it was warm enough to garden, and I got a lot done. I planted almost all the plants I bought last fall and I only have one rose left from last spring’s order that I still need to plant. I’m scoping out a new spot–that means I’ll have to get another rose to plant where I thought I would plant this one.  You can never enough roses!

It’s good not to have planting last spring’s plant purchases hanging over my head.

For some reason, I finally worked up the nerve to start using the Rose Pro method of fertilizing, what appears to be a complicated series of odd things you have to hunt down at nurseries and drug stores to pour on your roses each month—urea, potash and Milogranite—just a few of the things in my future.  This week, I put Epson Salts and Super Phosphate on half of them today (the half that didn’t get the Ada Perry’s Magic Formula—I just love that name and won’t stop using it!).

Now I have an experiment going. We will see what works better. I can’t put the Ada Perry’s with Bone Meal on my roses where the dogs will eat it so it goes on the plants outside the wall. The puppy took a lick of the Epson Salts but I stopped her right away and most of my roses are fenced off (for this reason and the because of the chickens) with that low green wire fence.

I put my first chicken poop compost on a few of my plants too. Hoping that doesn’t burn, but it sat for six months and looked like real compost you’d buy in a store (Ha ha) and the dogs don’t want to eat it because it doesn’t smell like chicken poop anymore—just a guess…

I planted rosemary and horsetail reeds in my chicken garden. I need to buy more to fill out the space because they look nice and the chickens aren’t eating them. Rosemary chicken is a new joke around here.

I planted two azaleas because I have acid soil and they are supposed to like that. We planted artichokes, tomatoes, delphiniums, blue berries, onions and Iceland poppies, which I had to fight over with little sister who wanted them all for her fairy garden. She is envious of big sister’s fabulous fairy garden but hers is just as good…

Boy, I’m so random. That’s a problem with liking plants and not having enough coffee.

My husband bought a Raticator. You should hear Henrietta squawk when she sees a rat. It sounds she is being strangled. I heard chickens can stop laying eggs when the rats come so it should make Henrietta happy to have a new rat trap to save her.raticator

Anyway, here’s stuff I don’t want to forget to buy:

More Bill Wallis geraniums—they are looking great.

More Peruvian lily

Rosa Rugosa alba

Ferns for fern grotto—new idea for under elm tree

Coral bells

Remember to consider weeping willows because Tacoma Stands look terrible and may need replacing

One new Zuni Crape Myrtle tree

Cat mint to plant under roses

New lemon (dwarf)

Plant eggplant this year

Okay that’s enough! It will probably take me a year to plant all that.

If I had a decent cup of coffee, I would probably make more sense. The French press is our salvation and our curse–it’s a slow process for a small cup of coffee. Today I heard my husband talking to my father about how to make cowboy coffee or boiled coffee, his lifetime specialty.  We have to do something while we wait for our new coffee maker to come in the mail. Here is his try at cowboy coffee.

coffee

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New Year Gardening

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by ninagarden in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

While I haven’t written for about a month, I have been gardening.  First task of the New Year garden in San Diego is rose pruning. With 21 roses, this takes me about two weekends with all the other things on our weekend “schedules.”   But I split it up nicely with pruning one weekend and cleaning, mulching, dormant spray and Ada Perry’s Magical Formula the next.

I hate dormant spraying and it always stresses me out to the point of in-action and ridiculous-ness (like three trips to Ace Hardware, fights with the hose, freakouts about chemicals and the chickens, kids and dogs), but it did help my roses last year with all the humidity. This year I had fruit trees to spray as well so I had to do it.

That done, now I still have mulching–my compost never seems to be ready. Fortunately, there were no rose pruning accidents like getting stabbed by giant thorns (2011 pruning), resulting in about 12 doctor visits and ending me up at a rheumatologist to diagnose what she decided was some type of arthritic condition brought on by a thorn lodged in my knuckle.  That took six months of diagnosis, lots of out-of-pocket fees and ended in me running from an MRI after discovering I really do have claustrophobia. (I had no idea when the technicians asked and then sent me into that outer space tube. I don’t know why they have a black hole at the end–really, they should tape up comforting pictures.) I now wear gauntlet gloves up to my elbows when I prune because I never want to go through that again.

The year 2011 a fading memory, 2012 a success and 2013 well under way, we are celebrating our winter garden and eating lots of wonderful plump sugar snap peas, lettuce, arugula and kale.  Bulbs are coming up everywhere and I’m waiting for a long stretch of day when I can get back out there to finish planting, pruning and mulching.  Oh yes, and with our weather fluctuating between 75 and sunny and 50 and foggy, drizzle, I’d like next Saturday to be sunny and balmy, please. I know we can’t complain about winters here in San Diego, but I do like to garden in the sun.

sabrina pea

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Long-Winter Fall

23 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by ninagarden in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

I have been feeling nostalgic for the year of gardening, thinking back on all I did this year. Now that Winter Solstice is behind us and it’s the eve of Christmas Eve, I am looking at a sunny, green yard, still blooming roses and pansies, sweet peas branching across the ground waiting to be staked and my Christmas garlands and wreaths drying out.

photo (106)

Sunny Southern California offers no rest for the gardener in the winter. July and August are my resting months.

While I haven’t been able to write much this fall, I still found time to garden. Ten minutes, thirty minutes here and there, running outside at 5 p.m. in the fading light to plant seeds or bulbs. It all got done–my ritual fall plantings of sweet peas, pansies and bulbs. Then the vegetables.

My sweet peas are climbing across the ground (never had time to make bamboo trellises yet), my winter vegetable garden has lots and lots of edible pea plants — wow, did I plant a lot of peas this year. There’s kale and arugula and one petite cauliflower.

The bulbs my six-year-old and I planted one afternoon are sprouting. My ugly hill is still ugly but has moved out of the “horrible to look at” category. I feel like I’ve planted a million perennials on that thing.  My chicken garden is not planted but the potted nursery plants sit ready for a free day when the ground dries out and I have time to dig. Two more roses sit in pots ready to plant on my arbor.

I can’t believe I still did all that–the things I wait for all summer long, that take fifteen minutes now in the yard instead of a day. You have to be focused when you don’t have time. I think of my sister who planted one side of my front yard for me one day when my children were babies. I had to go somewhere for an hour, and I’d sat the pots all around the fountain where I wanted them planted.

“I’ll do it later,” I said, my voice trailing off because I really had no idea how I would do it.

When I came home, she’d done it all. Like some super-human sprite, she’d planted my entire front yard (well, almost). I have to muster that “inner sister” a lot lately when I am feeling distracted. “What would she do?” I ask myself. “How would she do it?”

Then I pull myself together and do it. I think of her speed and single-minded action.

I wish I had more time, but I suppose everyone feels that way this time of year. We all need our inner-sister or whoever inspires us to get things done. However, as a writer, I tend to dwell on things. Like this blog, which I’ve been thinking of for days. Perhaps I thought of my sister planting my yard because she is not coming for Christmas this year and I will miss the chaos and her ability to cook a giant dinner in the midst of all that Christmas noise and exhaustion as easily and efficiently as she landscaped my yard.

So I am baking a lot, looking out at the sunshine today, thinking of January when I vow to spend a day in my garden pruning my roses and preparing them for spring, willing myself to be efficient and single-minded and enjoy it all.

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Agua Linda Farm — Thanksgiving

23 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by ninagarden in Arizona, pumpkins, Tucson, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Agua Linda, farm, Oaklahoma, ranch, Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving I was thankful for my family, for my work which has kept me insanely busy for a month, and for a day spent in the country this fall learning about one of my ancestor gardens at the Agua Linda Farm.

We spent the day there in October with my dad, my brother and his wife Sherry and my two girls.  The Agua Linda is special to my family because my grandparents lived there roughly from 1950 to 1957 after they sold part of the big ranch. My parents lived there in a small adobe house (that no one liked) and my brothers and sisters were raised there as babies. My grandmother built a beautiful Joesler designed home and changed the name from Reventon to Agua Linda for the beautiful Santa Cruz River that she had a view of from her sweeping picture windows.

I was married there in 2000.

So the place is very significant for my family. (And any data I give is probably contestable except for my wedding!)

My family sold it to the Loew family in the late 50s when we could no longer afford to keep it. Members of the Loew family (of Loew’s Theaters and other famous Hollywood names) have lived there since and they have been gracious enough to let me get married there and also indulge in our visits. They have also turned it into a fantastic organic farm that’s open to the public, hosting the greatest pumpkin patch you’ve ever been to. (Of course, I’m biased.)

Pumpkin head courtesy of Uncle Carlos

We had a great day there and also a great conversation with my dad who told me all the history I should know and seem to continuously forget. He says it’s a frustrating place for him to remember the crops that didn’t grow and the cattle that he had to sell, but it still seems magical to me and it’s truly one of the most beautiful places on earth. My Grandma was right! And her iris plants (and maybe violets) still sprout along the brick pathways and courtyard surrounding the house.

Well, here are some photos and some interesting things about silage that my dad told me. (I asked about that because my daughter ran away from me in the silage maze!)

Back in the days we started the farm, they had a cattle feeding operation there and they fed raised corn to feed the cattle–Mexican June, was the name of the corn. It grew so high and tall that the producers of the movie Oklahoma used it for the “Corn as high as an elephant’s eye.” No joke. (Later I will post a beautiful picture of my mother standing next to it.) They bought it and took it away from the farm and planted it somewhere else where they filmed that scene. At least, that’s family lore. But here’s the silage details, which are probably boring next to the gossip, but the farmers out there might like it.

“We put 3,000 tons of silage in a pit. We buried it and put water on it and it ferments.  Wheat, soybeans, cotton, …you chop it and ferment it and the cows get drunk on it.”

“First we dug it and with pitch forks feed it to the cattle. Then we found a silage loader. You dropped the silage on a conveyor belt and it went on the feed truck and we fed the cattle. It was the first silage loader in Arizona. Our silage pit was the length of a football field.”

Here we digress into a general history of every ranch in Southern Arizona and who sold what and who bought what and who lived on a crappy piece of land where it never rained (I think that was every rancher in Southern Arizona.)

Well, I wrote enough and I’m boring you. I hope you enjoyed the pictures! If you are ever in Tucson, drive south towards Nogales and go to the Agua Linda Farm. There’s a big sign on the highway so you can’t miss it.

Happy Day with candy apples!

Happy Thanksgiving! What garden, new or in your past, are you thankful for?

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Dark Morning

02 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by ninagarden in dog, moon, morning, ranch, summer, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

garden, Moon, Morning, outdoors, ranch, Summer

I wake up and I’m outside a lot earlier these days because of the puppy. While I wish I could sleep in, the morning sunrise and the stillness is something I love. I remember the mornings on the ranch when my mother would wake me in the dark, and my father would already be awake drinking his second cup of coffee and listening to the weather radio. The weather was what set his mood—rain was a happy morning and a brisk walk to the barn. When it was bad news, we’d drive the truck, late from listening more to make sure the radio hadn’t changed the forecast in those last few minutes.

The barn was dark and still with only one light on in the tack room, and in the dark corrals, the horses stamped and shuffled, waiting for us to saddle them.

The sunrise would build behind the western hills and the sky would turn from dusky lavender to yellow then orange. The sun was seemed like it didn’t come up for hours (even though it was probably only one hour) as we rode out to find the cattle. When the sun did come, it was blinding and its rays seemed to ignite the sharp yucca leaves and grasses.

The sound of dark morning was always peaceful and silent even with birds chirping and the jingle of spurs, the slushing of horse legs and saddles. Maybe a whistle or low whisper of Spanish about the weather of the work to come.

Unfortunately I get about ten minutes of silence nowadays—from the time I sat down to write this until here on the page.

Now dogs are barking in my house. The senior grandma dog just woke up and she is wheezing and puffing. Chairs are rattling. The kids are humming and buzzing and building fairy houses and singing a song about the puppy to Ode to Joy (boy, that is a big theme in my house). The chickens are cackling to be let out of the pen. Feet are scuffling across our hardwood floors. And my husband is calling my name with a question mark at the end trying to find me to cook breakfast or bring him a dustpan.

Fortunately, I was already outside at 6:30 a.m. and caught this picture of silence (below). See the pretty morning moon. And here are some pictures (2nd and 3rd down) of the ranch so you can get an idea of what it was like. You can look at them and imagine the silence.

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First Egg! So Exciting!

30 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by ninagarden in Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

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Pumpkin’s Progress

22 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by ninagarden in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Ok. Where did my post go?

I posted this picture of one of my seven pumpkins — they are actually growing. I am happy to say. I pollinated them (I guess correctly for once!) and went away for a week. When I came back, I actually had pumpkins that were growing large and fat! Here’s a picture.  Now I have to wait — the hardest part of growing vegetables!

 

 

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Outdoor Rooms in Garden Haven

03 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by ninagarden in garden, gardening, outdoor rooms, roses, Uncategorized, vegetables

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Tags

BBQ, outdoors, roses, Summer

This is Julie, matching her pillows.

Our friends Julie and Brian have one of my favorite backyards. The space has a lower patio where they have dinner parties on a long Spanish table is surrounded by a retaining wall planted with lush roses, lavender, alyssum and sometimes tomatoes. The upper level has a sloping grass lawn–perfect for cartwheels, a fire pit area with chairs for lounging and borders of citrus and cannas. The upper level has another patio, a loggia type structure and the kids’ trampoline.  Julie decided to freshen up for summer and to redecorate her lounging area now that Brian put a tin roof on the arbors that make the outdoor room at the top of the hill. They had us over to see their hard work and have some snacks and of course, fabulous cocktails.

Here’s my Better Homes  & Gardens shot of the outdoor living room. I love the turquoise and orange. The curtains block the wind and sun (and I’ll tell you a secret–you can get them at Ikea. They are regular curtains. Pillows at Home Depot–if any are left!)

The patio fountain:

Here’s the jalapeno poppers they made from scratch with chiles from our friend Dulce’s garden:

Yum-yum. Get the recipe here: Sunset Magazine July 2012 edition.

Julie is a designer, and I think the colors in her new garden room are fabulous. Don’t you? Orange and blue, my favorites.  As we ate our jalapenos in her new room, seated on the newly rosewood oiled teak furniture, we planned the next few weeks of gardening. September is coming and that is a busy month in San Diego. I can’t wait for my family to be occupied with football on TV so I can go outside and garden–hee, hee. Really! Okay back to the yard– it looks amazing. Here are more pictures of all the outdoor “living room” type areas they have interspersed in their yard–maybe it will give you ideas next time you want to create a garden room!

For lounging time! (Not much of that when you are busy gardening!)

Beautiful retaining walls from salvaged concrete patio. I love the roses and lavender planted along it. Some years, they mix in tomatoes. Those chairs surround the firepit. I like that they have lots of thick gravel to outline the different areas.

Sorry, Brian! I don’t have your photo! You were too busy cooking!

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