Author Archives: zack

Shower Time for the Red-breasted Nuthatch

This Red-breasted Nuthatch and its partner (parent? child? mate?) spent quite a while enjoying the gentle overhead sprinkler this morning.  This one sat on a pole bean support directly underneath the falling water, preening and cleaning, and the other, inspired … Continue reading

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Potato Manatee

This little fellow emerged from the garden this morning.  It’s a potato of some kind – I keep terrible garden records – and I harvested a fair amount of its brethren, to be offered up to the gods of potato … Continue reading

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Citizens of the Food Forest

I’ve been working on selecting plants to fill out the various levels in the food forest.  I’m basing my selections on the following criteria: Prior history of local success.  That is, do the plants succeed in the garden proper, or … Continue reading

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Maybe This Year, a Pomegranate

Two flowers so far this year, and perhaps one will grow up to become an actual fruit?  The plant has been in the ground for three or four years, and it sort of fruited last year, producing a few flowers … Continue reading

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Harvest – Blueberries, Garlic and Eggplant

Back in the garden after a week in Glacier National Park in Montana.  Lots of interesting plants in Montana, including bear grass, lanceleaf stonecrop, a native succulent, and Rosa woodsii, a wild rose similar to the California wild roses that … Continue reading

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Now THAT’S a Rattlesnake

This handsome creature was curled up down by the mailboxes at the end of the road.  First one I’ve seen anywhere on my road or the immediate vicinity in all the years I’ve lived here.  Perhaps two feet long, and … Continue reading

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A Few Flowers

It’s finally hot, and the potatoes have begun to flower.  They’ll eventually produce small fruits full of seeds.  Though the resulting seeds could probably be planted (though I’ve never tried), potatoes are typically planted from “seed potatoes,” which aren’t seeds … Continue reading

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A Beginning and an End

From the gardener’s perspective, flowers represent the beginning or the end of an annual’s useful life. Spring and summer annuals are generally planted for their fruiting bodies – think tomatoes, eggplant, peppers and squash, while fall and winter vegetables are … Continue reading

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Aphids with Mustard

Every year (though usually quite a bit earlier in the season) the aphids – I like the term ‘plant lice’ – come out and congregate on various plants.  They tend to favor roses and cole crops. This morning, I noticed … Continue reading

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Ridiculous Abundance

Gardening is about cycles and rhythms.  Last year, the blueberries took the year off, producing basically half of what they do in a good year.  This year, on the other hand, the bushes are outdoing themselves.  Ridiculous abundance.  These will … Continue reading

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