The Garden in December

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Robb's dad mentioned that he can't really visualize our garden, based on the pictures on our blog.

We had a beautiful, sunny day today, and I took the opportunity to do some much-needed weeding. If I wanted to have a wild onion and oxalis plantation, I'd be all set. As it is, our tiny garden is a living museum of the invasive plants of Northern California.

After digging out a huge amount of our invasive wild onions, I shot a few photos. And then I spent a stupid amount of time, stitching them together. (I really don't have any grasp of the program that did the work, but I had a lot of fun messing about with it.) This top photograph, can be seen in more detail over at my Flickr site (click here for the link). You can see all the stuff of our yard, but the image really makes no sense at all.




This photo is more accurate. I'm standing under our pittosporum tree, in front of the Gloriana honeybee hive. From right-to-left, you can see our vintage lawn furniture, our lemon tree, the back of our house, our strangely-located water hook-up, our persimmon tree, the Garage Mahal, and our vegetable garden. The blue shape is the Elizabeth Taylor hive. For reasons unknown to us, we have ladders and construction netting atop the top of the World's Ugliest Fence. We're ignoring that part of our yard, until we get other things under control. The red thing in the left corner of the photograph is our firewood rack. Some day Robb and I will have enough money to repair our fireplace and chimney, and when we do, all that wood will be nicely seasoned. Until then, the wood rack is a habitat for spiders and salamanders.




Here's the view from the back of the yard. Our garden really is the size of a postage stamp. I'm standing under the Brugmansia tree, which the bees love. To my left is the compost pile. The tree on the left is our plum. That poor thing needs a lot of love. The wooden structure is for beans and peas. Please ignore the stack of bamboo in the corner, and look instead at that lovely door that Robb installed in our garage.

You can just barely see the Elizabeth Taylor hive, which is quite subdued, compared to the Gloriana hive. We actually lifted the lid of the hive today, because we were convinced the bees were all dead. They were just fine. Like most of America, they were probably hanging around the house in their jammies, and playing with their Christmas presents, instead of doing anything productive.

Speaking of unproductive, all that's really being harvested in the garden is kale. We've got a few beets left. Okay, we've also got some herbs. Also, I've planted every kind of allium I could think of -- garlic, onions, leeks, and shallots. The slugs devoured the chives, but left everything else alone. (May I should re-visit my dreams of having that onion plantation, after all...)

The danged slugs ate all the rest of my seedling vegetables to the ground. I swear, instead of preparing the soil, and planting seeds, I could have just done nothing at all. The end result would have been about the same.

A Year Ago
Earning the Trust of the Feral Cats

Two Years Ago
Birds, and Disability -- the One-Legged Willet

Three Years Ago
Unfinished Christmas Knitting,
or Robb looks great in a tube-top and arm-warmers

Four Years Ago
Recovering from a Spinal Cord Injury
We go Birding