Building the Garden

We decided that we would start with four 4 foot by 8 foot raised beds.  These were made from a composite material which a local lumber yard stocked.  Hardware cloth was placed on the bottom of each box as a barrier for the gophers.  Here they are waiting upside down on the driveway.

They were to go on a fairly level piece of ground not too far from the kitchen.

The beds were going to be on drip watering, so we needed to bring water to the site.  The PVC pipe for the water was buried in a trench from and outdoor faucet to the location of the beds.

An enormous pile of planter mix was delivered and then shoveled into the wheelbarrow and dumped into the raised beds.

Then it was time to enclosed the garden area with a fence to keep out the deer, rabbits and other critters. Since we would be expanding the garden area in the future, T-posts were used to old the fence wire except for the ends at the gate where wood posts were used.  The drip tubing was set in place and then it was time to plant.

I finally have a garden again!

One of the reasons for buying acerage was to have room for a bigger garden and more fruit trees and berries than we had in our home back in Saratoga years ago. The place in Saratoga was a fixer upper and it required some hard work to get things going there. However, in moving from a surburban quarter acre to almost five acres in a more rural area the scale of things makes the difficulty of some projects a lot bigger than just the relative sizes. Our yard in Saratoga had a fence, and although there was an ongoing problem with gophers the “pests” were managable. Here, the area is open, gophers set up an extensive freeway system below the surface, and deer, jack rabbits and cottontails are regular visitors. There are some weeds which are so nasty they would be a marvel of bio-engineering had they come out of the laboratories instead of mother nature. o the process to get things to the garden I have pictured in my head has simply been out of reach… and twenty years have gone by.

This past year I started sketching out the garden plans again.   As I worked over the ideas, I found that some of the old assumptions needed to be changed. And as I started making those changes, they seemed to propagate other changes. But it was clear that the grand scheme was going to not going to happen this year — and probably not next year either.

  So I looked for options that might work while the bigger pieces were still to be done. The result — very simple — four raised beds that could be set up near the house with a minimal amount of fencing. While the initial concept was that these were to be “temporary” beds, as that part got going, the temporary part has vanished and another series of changes — improvements to the overall plan have happened as a result of the experience so far.

The drip system for watering was completed over the Memorial Day weekend. Seedlings and seeds planted the week before are beginning to make the beds look more like a garden. I am looking forward to discovering what will grow here and am hoping for fresh corn and green beans and vine ripened tomatoes to serve at mealtime again.

The Mystery of the Abandoned Hive

I went down to the shed on our property to check it out and noticed a lot of buzzing critters around a stack of old trash cans beside the building. Returned the next day with a camera to confirm what I saw.

It looked like bees were going in and out of the bottom two cans.  They seemed like honeybees

A couple weeks later I realized that I did not see the bees, even on a warm day when they should have been active. Some days later I investigated further. (Got brave enough to disturb the trash cans.) No bees. Another week and still no bees, so pulled the cans apart. Found old honeycombs were in them, but no sign of live bees. Also found two wood rats inside. I don’t know if the rats drove the bees away or if they were simply scavengers.

Talk about the weather

I have lived in California long enough that it now seems normal for the hillsides to be green at Christmas and by Memorial Day weekend they have turned a crispy brown shade (otherwise called “golden” in the tourist information.)Summer weather is typically month’s of the same forecast — just minor adjustments for the temperature highs and lows.

This year has been an exception in that respect.  Late rains were just enough so that some faint patches of green still remained on most of our nearby hills by the end of May.  The weather for the first weekend in June has been even more remarkable.  It actually rained! Not the “it never rains in California in the summer” rain where most of it dries before hitting the sidewalk.  Not the coastal fog so thick that the moisture drips from trees.  But actual, normal, enough to refill the bird bath, real rain.

So it rained on a couple of parades.  Countless outdoor events were dampened.  Some crops were at critical stages and received damage. But compared to the floods, tornadoes, fires and other natural disasters in the recent news, this was more of a case of Mother Nature providing many California residents a little something extra to help us remember the weekend events.

One Snake, Two Snakes…

One warm afternoon when I went outside, I noticed a snake sunning itself on the driveway. I happened to have my cell phone in my pocket, so I tried to get a few photos before encouraging the snake to find a safer place for it to sunbath.

The sun was at an angle where I had troubles seeing what was on the cell phone screen. I clicked and moved a bit closer, planning to get it from a better vantage. Then I noticed the snake was moving and when I looked at it directly, I discovered the snake was actually two snakes. One quickly moved off into the brush. It wasn’t until I saw the photo on the larger screen of my computer that I found that I had been lucky to get a shot of both snakes, side by side.

With a little encouragement, the second snake headed for the hills to join its companion. Once they were off the asphalt, it was extremely hard to see them. Their camouflage was excellent for the situation.