As Always, Be Careful What You Ask For...

We knew that we wanted to do some hiking in the mountains. And we knew that we didn't want to go when it was icky-sticky hot and overly-crowded. So we waited until early October, that Indian summer time.

But we sure weren't expecting to be hiking in the snow. Trust me, it's one sure-fire way to learn whether your boots are waterproof (His, yes. Mine, not so much).

But L.A. had gotten rain (L.A.? Rain? They don't "get" rain), which meant snow on the trail to Bishop Pass. And although the hiking was slow, it still was a great time.

So if LA can get rain, don't you think it's time we got some?

Volunteers of Oakland #4

Pretty much these days, littering is uncool. Except for cigarette butts. Relatively neat and tidy people who would never leave trash behind simply do not recognize cigarette butts as trash. So they leave the damn butts all over the sidewalks and streets. And parks. And beaches. And everywhere else, for that matter.

(I remember on a recent visit to Rome, looking down at the gap between the platform and the train and noticing that the entire area was completely packed with cigarette butts, to the depth of, say, two feet. No smoking on the train, but on the platform, one last puff.)

So what, right? They're not that big, and many fewer people now smoke. Sadly though, cigarette butts - an estimated 120 billion of which are discarded in public places in the U.S. alone - contain a toxic stew of chemicals, plastics and carcinogens. In short, "Yuck." Bad for us, but even worse for birds and aquatic animals.

Enter my neighbor Poppy (7 years old) and her friends. It might be called activist art - but she simply said that she liked making them: two for our block, and a few more around the neighborhood.

And, hey, it seems to be working.

When Friends Give You (#3)....

Old broken plates, cover a stepping stone.

I already used up a bunch of donated tiles for a similar project, but I had to fuss around a bit to make it feel right. This one pretty much put itself together in less than a day.

The one element in this square which was from my own stash is the white pieces with the blue rim. They came from my best guy, or rather, from the cafeteria at UC Santa Cruz in the 1970's....I have never asked for the details of that story.



And the second square? I still had a few shards of blue plates left and I should have been able to throw them out, right? But that would have been too easy. You see, during a recent garage clean-out, I rediscovered a stack of handmade star tiles (created a while ago in ceramics class). I can no longer remember why I thought I needed those lumpy star tiles in the first place, but clearly, they belong with the blue plates pieces...

Thank you, Jean!

The Little Surprises of Gardening

It's a turnip, right? Or maybe a rutabaga.

Regardless, it certainly isn't the pretty golden flowers I was expecting.

The seed packet claims to be Black-eyed Susans. Once I planted a dark romaine lettuce seeds from this same company and got a bright green leaf type, but that was alright. That time, at least it was still a lettuce. This time, though, they were waaay off.

Yes, I'll be having a little chat with customer service.

The Little Surprises of Remodeling

Warning: Some of the images featured below may give you the creeps.
I've just been reading "The Coddling of the American Mind" in the Atlantic (recommended read) and don't want to get in trouble for grossing you out.

Princess

It's construction season in my neighborhood and the rodents have been shaken loose from their usual hidey-holes. They've been freed to boldly go explore the strange new worlds of the nearby neighbors.

Or not. Princess has been busy doing her part to reduce the rodent population, one small death at a time. She stays very local (probably less than one-half acre), but she is both persistent and fast. Actually, she's mostly just persistent.

It's not because we were out of town and she wanted to welcome us back that she's been after the rodents. Nah, it's what she does and who she is. The good news is that, while she is focusing on ridding the 'hood of rodents, she can't spend a lot of time hunting birds (more about that later).

Princess' Most Recent Rat

Alameda County Vector Control Services has ideas to help prevent rats (big mice) and mice (cute little rats) from infesting your home. Some of the ideas are obvious; other, such as screening off your crawl space with galvanized mesh, I wouldn't have dreamt up on my own, but can really make a difference. 

Freebies from Annie's

Freckles (?) Pineapple Lily

Annie's Annuals allows those with a small bit of oomph and entrepreneurship to collect free, high-quality potting mix. Yes, free, except that you have to shovel it yourself (and unlike horse manure, this stuff is heavy) and you can only get to it on Wednesday mornings.

First come-first serve. And plan ahead - like late winter or so - if you don't want to be disappointed. 'Cause once the gardening season heats up, so does the competition. On a nice clear day in January, however, it's just you and the pile.

And a few plant labels, an occasional plastic pot, old root balls, and once in a while, a surprise (think Cracker Jack®, which apparently still exists after 120 years).

The last time I went shoveling, the mix included a mystery bulb. I threw it in the green bin and then felt badly. So I fished it out, tucked it in a pot and ignored it.

Pineapple lily. Definitely a pineapple lily, although, based on the photos, not one of those that Annie's grows. A wandering pineapple lily? If so, it now has a home in Oakland.

When Friends Give You (#2)...

Finial for the top of the trellis

Copper tubing, make a trellis for those unruly vegetables.

Leftovers from an ancient plumbing project can be surprisingly useful. It took some fiddling around to make the pieces fit together, but I had enough extra joiners and fittings to waste.

No soldering, necessary. Waterproof epoxy (the kind intended for plumbing) should hold it all together. Trust me, I've done this before and it lasts for years.









Yeah, the trellis appears a bit wonky, but with the long side sitting a little deeper in the dirt, it will all level out. The third leg, offset at a 90 degree angle, helps with stability.








Thank you, Dick Holmes!

My New Favorite Flower

Actually, there are two of them:  Papaver rupifragum (Spanish poppy) and Papaver atlanticum (Moroccan Poppy), Truth to tell, I can't really tell one apart from the other. One's supposed to be shorter, but when they're wearing heels, it's really hard to tell...

They have been blooming all summer on very little water. The blooms only last for the day, but then another flower or six unfurls for the next day's show. They will overwinter here, as well as in places as cold as central Montana (USDA zone 4). That's way better than I can do.

They seem to thrive in part-sun or more (I may test their shade tolerance next year). Also, bees, especially carpenter bees, love these babies. I grew these from seeds (pretty easy) and have been saving this year's seed crop. I plan to spread them around in early spring.

And who knows? They may have cross-bred after a romantic night out on the town (I tell ya, those heels can get a girl into trouble) so I'll never really know who's who.

Salt Potatoes

Early June Harvest
Purple Viking Potatoes

Last month I dug up the Purple Viking potatoes which I had planted in February. I hadn't planted many, so I didn't expect many. Only I got many - many little one, that is. Very unusual for Purple Vikings, which are known to produce "lunkers" (large, over-sized potatoes).

What to do? Reaching back into my upstate New York heritage, I came up with salt potatoes. It wasn't something that we were served regularly growing up, but it is one of those rare regional dishes from upstate New York.*

When asked about salt potatoes, my mom wrote:

"The first time I had salt potatoes was when we went camping at Grass Point along the St. Lawrence and Dad and I left you kids with Grandma for the day while we went to a pre-NY State Fair clambake for communication folks, reporters, etc. in 1962. There was clam chowder (delicious), clams on the half shell and bowls of tiny salty potatoes with melted butter poured over.

Elsie (Grandma) Deegan
1900 - 1998

At the time you couldn’t even buy raw salt potatoes in the store so no one could make their own…..unless you had a crop like mine!! And they were really good tasting.

[One of the few crops that my mom can't seem to grow is potatoes.]

Grandma told me that when she was young in Tarrytown, little potatoes were called pig potatoes and mostly fed to pigs. At her corner store, pig potatoes were 2 CENTS a pound and all the poor folks bought them and served them with the skins on. She said her family ate a lot of them for years."

*In my experience, should you say that you are from "upstate New York" people imagine Yonkers, or perhaps the Catskill Mountains (100+ miles from NYC). Alternatively, they lock onto Buffalo, at the very western tippy-tip of the state.  Well folks, it's about 350 miles from the eastern edge of the state - the Hudson River - to the western border at Lake Erie. At one point, that was the western frontier of this nation.

Mosaic Project #2

The garage is unrecognizable, what with a new roof, new overhead door and new lights that actually turn on when you flip the switch.

And it got a total clean-out. The bulky pick-up guys came and took what the dog walkers and pedestrian commuters left behind. And all those old paint cans, dead batteries and dried out caulk tubes were delivered to the proper authorities. Now the garage is so clean, we're thinking that a real, life-size car might just fit inside. Unbelievable.

All this work has meant that a lot of partially completed projects were rediscovered, including this ceramic planter which I tiled a number - think of a very large number - of months ago. It has simply been waiting for someone to go get a new bag of grout.

However, one question remains: which lucky plant will get to call the blue pot "home"?