May 25, 2016 Summer is Coming Fast!

This time of year is always bittersweet.  The last of the cloudy days.  The last of the wonderful sound of raindrops on our metal roof.  The last of the cooling breezes.  But all the plants have woken up.  The trees have been in a parade of blooms since Feb. starting with the yellow Acacias, to the Russian Olives, to the Bottlebrush and now the Silk Mimosas.  And although we don't have the number of bees I would like, this has been the best year for Hummingbirds.   The air has been fragrant with purple Sweet Peas and Honeysuckly vines.  (And not so sweet when I dumped a bucket that sat wet too long of chicken manure and pine shavings from the courtyard. Yuck.)

The hot-wire chicken pen is done and the young chickens are in their new (to them) coop.  

Next to the front door I planted a grape when we first moved in (2008).  I thought it died many times.  But it is still there.  And finally I think it may make it to the trees nearby, up and away from the deer.  We will see if it does.

Sometimes my extreme DYI tendencies make my husband shudder.  Like these new beds for example.  Pretty they are not.  But I am happy they are finally in.  Sometimes it takes me so long just to decide which way I will go I get paralyzed.  The idea with these beds is to utilize their proximity to the chicken pen.  I have comfrey and nettles which are both good for compost.  Inside the chicken pen I will have two compost piles going.  These will be located right near where I put the coop manure when I clean it out.  The beds here are made of e-Crete left overs, broken cement bricks from our patio project and cement board backing.  I also bought some concrete blocks which are grey in the photo.  But they were too heavy and we have so much e-Crete anyway.  

This circular bed below is to the right of the comfrey and nettles.  In it I now have planted: perennial kale, skullcap baikal, milkweed, ma huang, hollyhock, sunflowers, purple plantain, thyme, and chives.   This bed was constructed with a layer of cardboard, then gravel, manure and then good soil on top.  It is a permanent bed and since my soil is heavy clay with poor drainage I wanted to alter that.  I got the idea from Strictly Medicinal seeds.  They call it turtle beds.  (This photo was taken a bit before the photo above.  

To the right of the circular bed I have since filled that in and planted red clover, trifolium pratense.  I got the seeds from Strictly Medicinals.  Harder to find this seed.  This is the variety that is used in herbal medicine although I used our native burr clover flower for tea this spring and liked it as well.  

The younger chickens are doing well.  We did have one rooster in the bunch which we killed so we are down to 14.  We bought them in April and so should have eggs around August.  

It has been a very good year for Pacific Tree frogs.  tons of them!

And our passionflower vine is exploding in flowers!  Now if I can just get it to go up the arbor instead of out!

The last thing I want to share with you is the power of dew.  Is that a commercial?  Anyway, we get lots of dew even when we don't have rain.  Each time you plant a tree or shrub you are installing a dew collector which catches the water in the air and draws it downwards.  This is a good thing for the soil.  Now we have hundreds of dew catchers.  However, I noticed that one plant in particular is really great at accumulating dew: the yellow bamboo.  I planted it to the left of the front door to block the western sun because although it has tenacious roots, they run horizontal and not deep (water lines are here).  I have noticed even on mornings that don't "feel" wet, the bamboo will have water droplets all over.  They were hard for my camera to capture however.  

Hope you enjoy the last days of May. :)