April 23, 2016

A few weeks have passed.  Here are some highlights of what's happening in our garden today...

We added a second tomato plant (on the right) to this pop-up bed.  I forgot to mention last time that the one on the left is a volunteer that popped up in December, and somehow made it through all the rain and frost.  It currently has 3 baby tomatoes; we suspect they will be Chocolate Cherries.  We had other volunteers pop up in December, but our hens got into our backyard one day and chowed down on them.  This was the only survivor.

The baby clementines...  This tree is only about 1.5' tall and is covered in these baby clementines.  It will be interesting to see how this develops.

Mr. Honeybee doing his thing in the blackberry blossoms...  Carry on, Mr. Honeybee.  Carry on...

Something is eating our almond tree leaves.  Does anyone know what it could be?

Check out this cluster of baby Honeycrisp apples!  I think there are about 10 on there, total.

The bush beans look happy, and a few baby jalapenos are growing...

I don't think I got a picture of the kale last time.  These plants are leftover from last Fall.  They keep making these tender kale leaves, which is awesome.

Cucumbers are getting bigger but not looking very happy.  We need to figure out what's going on with them.

These two summer squash plants are stoked in this planter; but the ones in the beds are looking sad, not sure why.

I had to throw in this picture of our new "Kettlepizza" attachment for our Weber.  It is supposed to create wood-firey pizzas without the expense of an actual wood-fire pizza oven.  

We're trying it out tomorrow. 

These are chickpea plants and red beets.  I don't think it is red beet season? But I'm throwing them in anyway.  Worst case scenario: we'll eat the greens.

Our stray cat gang has been thinking it's cool to sharpen their claws on the tender bark of our baby cherry trees.  Enter awesome invention: plastic spikey mat that you can put around the base of your trees, which makes it unpleasant for animals to stand on.  Nice!

Some eggs from our hens this morning...  And check out our awesome retro chaise longues from the 1970s.  Chris wanted to throw them out at one point, but is now grateful for my intervention.

Check out how great these lettuces are doing!

Lady bug larvae!

Maddox, thinking she is hiding...

And finally... We are giving Mason bees a try.  We just got this little starter house for them.  They should be arriving on Wednesday.  We hardly have any honeybees around anymore, so we are hoping this will help with pollination this Spring/Summer.  Stay tuned.