On Hounds, Crop Report and More

It’s been too long since my last post – we’ve had harvests of tomatoes, grapes, a few cherries, strawberries, apples, and Asian apple pears. Our doughnut peach tree has hundreds of green peaches, so looking forward to a luscious harvest, even taking into account the usual tithing to birds and squirrels. Our grape vine never gave us (or the birds) so many grapes. Speaking of birds, we have Black Headed Grosbeaks again, along with a Hooded Oriole and its mate (the male is quite flashy, we call him Scuba). There are wonderful hummingbirds who love the old oaks as well as the bougainvillaea and morning glories, and of course Mercury (the Blue Jay) and his mate, and many more wonderful species of birds.

Back on the plant front, I went to my girl friend’s house and was amazed at how lovely her vegetable garden was. Everything grows in tidy but bountiful humps. Loads of tomatoes, peppers, squash, lettuce, but all so NEAT, so tidy. My garden seems to grow vertically – I suspect our large trees, and now the grape vine that encircles (and embraces) the vegetable garden, all combine to give too much shade. Even though the tomato plants are a bit stalky, the yield is pretty good. I’ve discovered that I love the ‘Sweet 100’ cherry tomatoes best this year. We’ve had some raspberries, strawberries, but the blue berries are struggling a bit. My husband ran a hose down to the vegetable garden so that helps me keep the bird bath clean (and now I have no excuse to not rinse my harvest before I nibble on it in the garden!). We’ve added some lovely new trees this year – another pummelo, tangerine, lemon, Fuji apple, and doughnut peach. The Asian Apple Pears are producing a bit this year, that’s a juicy treat! My watermelon and corn once again didn’t make it. There are eggplants starting, so that is promising. The fig tree has a nice crop of figs starting, those make lovely desserts. The garden stars are clearly the original doughnut peach, which has hundreds of peaches, all green still, and the grape vine, which has hundreds of fat bunches of red flame seedless grapes – YUM. Nothing like homegrown.

A most exciting development is something new I learned – how to root a branch that broke off of my Asian Apple Pear tree – I’ll do a separate post on how I did that, but for now I want to note that I’m excited that this little twig just entered phase 3 – phase one was getting the twig to survive and phase two was getting the twig to grow roots, and now phase 3 is that I’ve re-potted and planted this heroic rooted sprig outside in a larger (and less protected) environment – if this sprig makes it then in a mere five years (or more) I’ll have Asian apple pears on it. What a thrill that will be! The adventure of course is learning how to grow life out of what otherwise might have been discarded. As background, the branch that broke off the Asian Apple Pear broke because it was so over laden with fruit that it couldn’t carry the weight. More detail on this Asian Apple Pear learning adventure to come in a later post.

Other fun developments include the first ever avocado on a particular avocado tree (took a few years) and the first plums on an old plum tree that had been nearly destroyed by lack of water before we purchased the property. It’s nice to see the old lady make a come back! A garden expert had actually recommended that I remove it – but I couldn’t bear to, I wanted to give it a chance! The garden is my haven, my sacred spot. All seems so good here, everything growing, everything happy, everything peaceful. The birds and squirrels and dogs all get along. -And the dogs – the wonderful dogs – such good gardening companions. here are some fun pictures, more to come soon!