How's Robb?

  It has been another lovely week in the garden. The beans are starting to ripen. It’s nice to pick enough for the two of us each day. This was what I picked on Saturday.  And this is what I picked on Sunday. The dragon tongue beans continue to be my absolutely favorite bean. Beautiful, easy to spot when harvesting, and unfailingly tender when I let them get a bit overgrown.  The red swan beans are nice, but I think I might try a different purple variety next year. If anyone has any suggestions for purple beans that do well in the Bay Area, I’d love to hear your thoughts.  This was the first year I managed to grow breadseed poppies. I’ve tried these in the past, and could not get them to germinate. I absolutely love the colors and the architectural quality of the seed pods.  Another first this year was a respectable crop of figs from the tree I got from my neighbors. They had it in a pot, and it was really struggling. They’d ironically named it Jésus (with Spanish pronunciation), becau

Last weekend I did a long-overdue inspection of my Emperor Norton hive. The colony, which previously had been so vigorous, seemed to be struggling.  As soon as I lifted the lid off the hive I could see the problem. The hive had been infiltrated by wax moths and their destructive larvae.  I don’t have any photos because my camera was misbehaving. And honestly, a wax moth infestation is both difficult to photograph and disgusting in person. I wasn’t interested in struggling with my camera in order to photograph that mess.  There was also a thriving community of spiders in the hive box. The less said about that, the better.  I removed all of the larvae-riddled honeycomb because the bees were avoiding it. This left the bees with a snug home and significantly fewer uninvited guests   Over the course of the past week, Robb had cleaned the nastiest comb out of the frames I had removed from the hive. We saved what we could, which wasn’t much.  On Saturday, I added a box of clean frames to the

  My life has been incredibly hectic since theaters were allowed to re-open, so things like blogging have completely languished.  To be honest, things were so unsettled during the time theaters were closed that I just didn’t know what to say. During this entire time my garden was a great source of comfort.  No matter what else was going on, I knew that things were growing in my tiny urban garden.  Bees would be foraging, and the scrub jays would be seeking out mischief. Because of the 4th of July falling on a Monday, I actually had a long weekend, and I spent every bit of it in my garden.  I had recently rearranged some of our vintage lawn furniture, which has been a great success with cats and humans alike.  The chickens circle like sharks when Robb and I eat outside, but we selfishly do not share our meals with them. We’re currently in a glorious time of year for backyard fruit. The red currants are just finishing up, and the pluots are ripening.   I’ve already made jam with the gree

... Oh hello blog!  I've neglected you terribly. But there's nothing like a fresh start.  In fact, the only thing better than a fresh start is a fresh start with fluffy baby chicks. On Friday, I picked up the two baby chicks that Robb had ordered from BioFuel Oasis in Berkeley.  They were hatched at Belt Hatchery in Fresno on Wednesday.  Is anything cuter than three-day-old chicks?   Robb and I ordered sex linked chicks, which are a hybrid two differently colored breeds of chickens. Because roosters carry two genes for coloration, while hens only carry one, this crossing produces chicks who have markedly different colors depending on their gender.   Hopefully, this will mean that we didn't bring home any accidental roosters. I picked the sassiest pair of chicks in the store, because I hoped that they'd be the healthiest and smartest.   Chickens are not known for their intelligence, but we've got one particularly dim-witted hen in our adult flock.  Our most foolis

  Have you ever thought about the expression "sportswear?"  These days, it's a kind of stuffy-sounding department-store-sounding word, used to describe "normal" clothes.  It refers to the kinds of clothes that people wear on a daily basis, when they're not at the office or at a formal event.   But why SPORTS wear?  Today, sportswear is different than activewear, which is kind of weird when you actually think about it.  (To say nothing of athleisure  clothing.) The history of sportswear is (to nerds like me) utterly fascinating.  There were so many factors that came together in the late 19th century and very early 20th century to create garments we still wear today. In 1839, a process was discovered to create a durable rubber product that could be used for everything from tires to the soles of shoes.  This lead to the explosion in popularity of the bicycle, which necessitated changes in women's clothing. Bicycles gave women more freedom of movement th