Springtime

Having good weather forces one to be out working in the yard, even when said person would rather spend the weekend lounging in the shade, drinking something cold. The past 2 weekends have been unseasonably hot here, clear and sunny with temperatures in the 70's. This would probably be great if a) we were acclimated to it and b) it didn't smack of "inconvenient truths." Climate change, anyone?

Thanks of course to all the sun, the fruit trees and shrubs are growing strong... but so is the grass. We still only have a (gas) weed-whacker, a manual push-mower (yes, the kind with no motor), and 2 kinds of what we're calling the "grass thwacker" - basically a manual weed-whacker (think of the old farm days.) We're creating heaps of grass clippings, which were at first going into the compost - until we ran out of room. Then we started adding them to the chicken coop as entertainment and/or bedding. Now we've got another big pile, which we'll try to dry (like hay) for use either as mulch, or one of our original uses.





Matt's been working on the "hop yard." We bought one rhizome each of five hop varieties, and Matt is building a massive trellis/ shade structure/ privacy screen. The posts are anchored in concrete. He dug out the beds and amended them with compost, then shaped the mounds. Today he got the rhizomes into the ground, and soon will finish the supports for the vines to grow on. Eventually, a bench will sit within the semicircle.

Who is Animalia?

(In case you were wondering...)

You've seen "posted by Animalia" at the bottom of each blog message... Animalia is Angela. It's just an old account nickname I use occasionally.

Why Animalia? I have a Wildlife degree... I study "Kingdom Animalia."

Above is an elephant seal pup that was lounging on the beach in December.

Embrace your wild side. :)

Happy Easter!

Hope your day was wonderful!

(Ceramic Easter basket hand-painted by my great-grandmother, Mama Fannie; stuffed animals from my mom.)

Rural harmony

The deer isn't actually inside the chicken pen, but behind it. As long as the deer aren't in the garden, they are more than welcome to help out with the mowing!

Gopher hunter, take two

We finally stopped him from digging when it became clear that even the sick, slow, injured or stupid gophers would have all been long gone.

Out with the old...

Matt's new guitar had a fatal defect... so back to the music store we went. After trying everything out again, he picked another winner. He loves it.



For you curious types, the flaw was that the pegs kept popping out when he tighened the strings. Even a new set of pegs wouldn't work.

Nicest dog run fence in town

If you know Matt, you know he likes to bring an artistic touch to all of his projects - even the dog run. Hence the 2x6 redwood railing on the front. Soon he'll router a design onto it. (He says maybe a vine, but he can be a little unpredictable so who knows what will materialize?)

Farm dog

Well, Sammy's trying his best to fulfill that role. He shows an interest in rooting out the gophers - no matter how long ago the gopher may have actually been there. He thinks he's in trouble in this picture, but really I was just trying to run and get the camera while he still had dirt on his nose. He'd cleaned himself up by the time I got back, but he hasn't made much progress on catching anything as of press time.

Compost, finally

This weekend, we finally got a truckload of organic compost to put into the beds. Now I'm feeling a little sheepish about rolling out huge swaths of black plastic on what is essentially our front yard...

Why I don't want to roto-till

Not that I judge anyone who does...

OK, so admittedly on the political spectrum I fall somewhere between bleeding-heart liberal and hippie. For some that might be explanation enough. And really, it's true I don't want to give the oil companies any more money than I have to, even to buy the few gallons of gas necessary to run a power tiller. Oh, and hand digging is good exercise. And it's practical enough for us since we're not trying to make a living from our garden.

But another good reason is to spare the earthworms! Every gardener knows the benefits of earthworms to the structure (looser) and content (richer) of the soil. The soil here is quite literally crawling with them. The compaction is the down-side of the past horse grazing, but fertile soil (due to their production and distribution of manure) loaded with earthworms is a major benefit. I'm not sure if it's true but I'm thinking that in a place like this, where the horses would have needed to be fed hay in addition to the grazing they could do, that the animals actually added more organic matter than just letting the grass grow and die (as happens in "natural" grasslands) would have. (Of course that source of fertility was imported from somewhere else.)

Finally finished digging the second row today. I'm definitely noticing the difference in difficulty digging now that it hasn't rained in a couple of weeks.

This post is dedicated to all the worms workin' away in our gardens as we speak...