How's Robb?

... The work on the garage continues. Like an idiot, I've saved the hardest, most demoralizing part for last. I still have a lot of scraping to do on the horrible paint under the eaves.  The roof of this garage (which we do not own) is a wreck.  The wood under the roof is rotten, and seems to be held together by spiderwebs and habit. Every time to touch it, chunks of wood and mummified spider carcasses fall on me, landing either in my hair or in my bra.  Scraping the paint off this punky wood is not a task that I relish.  It's sweaty, dirty, and a bit soul-crushing. There are plenty of pleasant things going on at our house. Our infant fig orchard has produced a few fruits.  The strawberries are delicious. Our baby pluot tree is in full fruit.  These are amazingly delicious, making up for the complete lack of a plum crop this year.  I'm looking forward to seeing this tree mature. We're also having an absurdly bountiful bean harvest. 

... On Mondays, I often participate in a group blogging event.  Everyone writes about what's going on in their gardens.  It's fascinating, and oddly cozy -- as if friends had just popped by for a visit.  But, as in all things, I'm a bit of an oddball in this group.  I don't weigh my produce. I don't keep spreadsheets of how much what I've grown would cost on the open market, and calculate my savings.  I'm content when I don't kill another food crop.  For me, gardening is about doing something that makes me happy. I love pottering around the garden, I love helping plants as they grow. And I love noticing things.  Slowing down.  Looking around.  Being aware of the little things that are swirling around my too-busy life. I particularly love watching the native pollinators that visit my garden.  The jewel-like green bees are particularly enchanting.  One of my great joys in my gardening day is watching the various native bees (as we

... A week ago, I helped my friend Christine relocate a colony of bees out of her lemon tree.   We carefully moved the beautiful wax structure that the bees had built, and placed it into a hive. My plan was to let the bees settle. Hopefully, they would accept the hive as their home.  I wanted to disrupt the bees as little as possible, and encourage them to make a home in the hive.  On Saturday morning, I went by Christine's house to see how the bees were doing.  Everything looked good. The bees were relaxed and un-aggressive.  They had been collecting nectar and pollen, and the queen had been laying eggs. So now, it was time to do a bit of housekeeping.  If I left things alone, the bees would have continued to build wax comb, eventually filling the wooden hive boxes. However, for the well-being of the bees, I chose to ever-so-carefully pry apart the layers of wax comb, and attach them to movable frames.  This way, each wax paddle can be removed from the hive

... I grow fennel in my garden. mostly because it it a host plant for the lovely Anise Swallowtail Butterfly. In past years, Robb and I have scrutinized the plants for baby caterpillars. This year, I'm doing something different. As soon as I see an egg, I bring the frond it is attached to inside, and let the egg hatch in the safety of our caterpillar tank. So far, we seem to be doing well.  We've got caterpillars of all sizes and stages of development, munching fennel and growing.  We've even had one attach itself to a branch in preparation for pupating.  I'm not going to photograph this creature right away. I'm worried I'll jostle it while its insides are rearranging themselves.  That might be catastrophic, so photos can wait.

... Earlier this spring, I bought a baby English Morello cherry tree.  Robb and I have been working around it, trying not to damage it, as we cut down the pitosporum tree and worked on repainting the neighbor's garage.  The tree produced two small cherries this year.  I suspect our fruit-crazed hen Isabella ate the one that was closer to the ground.  To save the remaining cherry, Robb built a little protective cage.  Yesterday, he and I sampled this one special fruit.  It was delicious, and we have great hopes for this tree in the future. California is in the midst of a serious drought, and Robb and I are making an effort to conserve water.  Our clothes washer is hooked up to a grey-water sistern, which we use to water the lawn.  All dishwater gets tossed out the window onto the fig trees.  Our neighbors must think we're completely insane.  Our plum tree hardly flowered at all this spring.  It was strange to have virtually no blossoms on tree.  As a result, we

... Today was the last day of my vacation, and I wanted to feel like I had made some progress on this garage project.  So I really pushed hard.  Rather than getting every inch fully scraped, I opted to prime the parts that were ready to go, and return to the tricky bits at a later date.  If I went back to work with the wall looking like a scabby mess, I think I'd be really demoralized. I decided to ignore the "bump out" on the left side of the garage, as well as the horrible mess under the roof, and also the lowest boards which are actually below the level of our garden soil.  I'll deal with all that later. I gave the entire wall one last good scraping, and then applied a 50/50 mixture of boiled linseed oil and turpentine (known affectionately as "blopentine" on the old house forum that I haunt).  Usually, there's an overnight waiting period, during which the mixture soaks into the wood.  The wood on this garage was so utterly dessicated

... One thing about having chickens, is that they never let you sleep late.  They hens wake up at dawn, and loudly fuss until they are let out of the hen house. This morning I was more tired than usual, and wove the noise the hens were making into a complicated dream in which Princess Letizia of Spain was responsible for the commotion.  My dream-brain assured me that if I could assemble a sentence out of words that started with each consecutive letter of the alphabet, Letizia would make the hens be quiet. I stumbled out of bed at 5:45, let the hens out, fed the cats, brushed my teeth, and then went back to sleep.  It struck me as odd that my hen Anne Elliott was sitting on the nest box so early in the morning, but at the time my brain was more occupied with the Spanish Alphabet Puzzle.  (I never did figure out the perfect phrase.) Hours later, I noticed that Anne Elliott was still sitting on the nest box.  Usually our hens will take about a half an hour to lay an egg. They c

... I'm still scraping our damn garage. I can only do a few hours at a time, because the work is so hard on my hands and arms.  Also the sun is just too strong, and now that I'm working at the roofline, we've had to take down the sun-shade. Robb and I pulled out the antiquated window screen, and I found an actual glass window to fit this space at an architectural salvage store.  Smog, of course, has been obsessed with exploring the neighbor's garage.  I'm at that infuriating part of the project where I want to move on to the next phase, but I just can't seem to finish what I'm working on.  Almost there.  Almost there.  That's what I keep telling myself.  And yet, completion seems just out of reach. I keep hoping that the Shoemaker's Elves will drop by and sand the damn wall for me.  Where are those lazy elves?  I've been leaving shoes all over the house as bait, but I can't seem to lure any over to do my work for me.

... Today I helped my friend Christine relocate some honey bees that had started to build a home in her lemon tree.  I brought her a beehive, as well as all of my tree-pruning gear.  It was super-windy, which made the ladder-work a bit alarming.  But overall, this was a remarkably easy operation. I'm such a dainty beekeeper.  I keep my pinkies extended while I work.  But seriously, aren't the bees wonderful?  Look at the beautiful comb that they have built.  They'll be much safer inside a hive, when the rains (eventually) return. I came prepared to pull apart the bees' comb.  I had frames ready to go, with rubber-bands to hold the comb in place.  But in the end, I decided to let the bees get settled inside the hive before I started ripping their home apart.  I'll go back over to Christine's place in the next week and do a bit of house-keeping.  For the moment, I just want the bees to accept the hive as their home. Cool, huh?

... If there is one thing that I've learned, while working on our house it is that no plumbing project is ever completed on the first try.  There are always Issues. When we wanted to center the sink in its alcove, we discovered that there was no actual wood to screw into.  The sink weighs a ton, and we couldn't just screw it into antique plaster and pretend that was going to work.  Several people suggested that we rip apart the bathroom wall and install more studs.  This seems really soul-crushing, and it seemed to me that if we could alter our hanging hardware, we could get the job done without tearing apart our walls. I had a long talk with one of my co-workers, who thought that fabricating a custom hanging plate was a crazy idea, and suggested that I check out the local plumbing supply place. So I had a long chat with the super-nice guys at the local plumbing supply place, who showed me every hanging plate they had in stock, listened to my tale of woe, and sugges

.... The paint scraping continues.  I'm about to get to the the worst parts of this garage, namely the strange janky window and the falling-apart rafter-tails.  Scrape, scrape, scrape.  This is what normal people do on their summer vacations, right? Back around xmas time, Robb and I bought a carload of cymbidium orchids at an estate sale .  I had to wait until they had finished blooming to re-pot them .  This weekend, I finally completed this project.  While I was at it, I also re-potted several of my other orchids, including the really special cymbidium orchids that I have suspended from the persimmon tree.  I reconfigured the way the smaller orchids were displayed, and generally got extremely dirty and sweaty.  It was a lovely way to spend a morning. In the afternoon, Robb and I set about replacing our cracked sink with our splendid ming green art deco sink .  And of course, things got complicated quickly.  We had always been baffled by the fact that the sink

  ... Monday 7:00am, drink coffee, stare at things 8:00am, assemble tools, spread out dropcloth, start scraping, think "we're screwed" 9:30am, breakfast with Robb -- including plums from our tree 10:00am, resume scraping 12:00 noon, arm feels like it is going to fall off, stop scraping, tidy up 1:00pm, pick vegetables from the garden, boil eggs, make a big salad for lunch 2:00pm, go shopping in Berkeley  7:00pm, dinner from garden -- radish green soup Tuesday 7:00am, drink coffee, stare at things 8:00am, assemble tools, spread out dropcloth, start scraping, think "I can do this" 9:30am, breakfast with Robb 10:00am, resume scraping 1:00pm, arm feels like it is going to fall off, stop scraping, tidy up 1:30pm lunch 2:00pm, take a Big Damn Nap 4:00pm, vote 6:00pm dinner 7:00pm knit night with friends Wednesday 7:00am, drink coffee, stare at things 8:00am, assemble tools, spread out dropcloth, start scraping, think "Did

... The garage scraping is going well, but I can only put so many hours in a day before my hand and arm start to protest.  The work involves very small motions, done with a lot of force, and I don't want to strain my hands. Robb rigged up a shade structure, which is very nice.  However, I'm quite aware that the back yard looks terribly trashy. Dear reader, can I convince you that all of that stuff isn't junk, and that it's really Interesting Projects, Waiting To Happen?  That tangle of dead plant matter on the turquoise lounge chair?  That's not just some weeds that need to go into the compost. Oh no.  That's flax that I grew last summer.  It hasn't been languishing in the back yard, hung up in the tree likes something that crazy people would do. Indeed not.  It has been " dew retting " in preparation for the day that I finally get my act together and turn this into a very short length of string.  At the rate I'm going, this will happ

... There's a spot in my vegetable garden where nothing seems to thrive.  It gets plenty of sun, and water, but somehow everything I plant there struggles until it eventually bolts.  I have no idea what the problem is. At the moment, the plants that I'm busily killing in this part of the garden are radishes. Radishes. These are the plants that gardening articles suggest growing with children, because they're so satisfyingly un-kill-able.  Any idiot should be able to grow radishes.  Except me.  I'm clearly special. My radishes are stunted, and have the texture of pencils.  However they had a lovely crop of greens, and I had a vague memory of a friend mentioning making radish green soup.  When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When life gives you radish greens.... A quick internet search turned up a lot of recipes that sounded workable, but contained potatoes.  Since I'm -- sadly -- now allergic to the delicious members of the nightsh

... Today I started work on scraping the paint off of the garage that abuts our property. This is one of those funny urban structures.  Technically, it belongs to our next-door neighbors, but they can't see (or access) the wall that faces our yard, and so have never maintained that side. I imagine this garage was built back in the 1920s, based on the type of wood used in its construction.  Perhaps the driveway reached this garage, once upon a time. But not any more.  This is a very typical structure for the San Francisco Bay Area.  An older wooden garage, too small to fit contemporary automobiles, and now used for other purposes. By the time Robb and I assembled all the tools for the project, and we had coffee and breakfast and did who-knows-what, it was late in the morning. I only got in about an hour and a half of scraping, before the sun had shifted, and it was too hot to keep going.  One thing we've learned in all of our exterior house-painting projects is to

... Back in 2010, I spent the better part of my summer vacation repainting our formerly dilapidated garage.  It was a grueling project, which we named the Garage Mahal.  ( Click here for insane photographs. ) Now that the pitosporum tree is no longer obscuring the view of the neighbor's garage, we get to see what a neglected eyesore it is.  I spent an hour and a half scraping paint off the siding boards.  The paint seems to be held on primarily by habit and spiderwebs.  It's dirty work, and I have to start a lot earlier in the day than I did today.  By noon, the sun shines directly on this wall, and it is just too hot to do any work. If you look closely at the photo, you can see Smog looking for adventure.  He's got his nose under the cream-color metal glider. And he also appears as an ectoplasmic ghost, between the extension cord and one of the orange chairs. This is not going to be a fun job, but I'll be so happy when this particularly squalid corner of ou

Here's a photo of our garden, from back in April.  Since that time, Robb has taken down the pitosporum tree .  This tree seemed to drop something sticky on the lawn every month of the year.  Robb did a slow, methodical removal of this tree, over the course of weeks and weeks.  In the fall, when the rains (hopefully) return, we'll be replacing the tree with several dwarf fruit trees. In the mean time, I'll be scraping the horrible paint off of the neighbor's garage, and repainting.  What does a theatrical scenic painter do on her much-needed vacation?  Yeah..... I don't want to talk about it right now. If you're interested in snooping around other folks' gardens, wander on over to Daphne's blog for the weekly garden jamboree. It's always interesting to see what's going on in gardens around the world.