Notes from my patio

Coco said:
Once a wind comes along, youll have a few more dandylions. Then you can make some wine or have a salad! Btw, do you use a 4 to1 ratio for the hummers juice?
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Dandelions are welcome in my yard, along with anything else that comes up green. I think the critters like that.

I put half a cup of sugar in a measuring cup and add water to the 1 cup mark. It's a rich brew, but the hummers love it.
 

Freaky weather. Yesterday it got to 86 and they're predicting today it will reach 90. The humidity is about 20 percent with a breeze coming from the desert. Two weeks ago my tree trimmers got rained out, but they came back last week and did the job. So, my mulberries are looking pretty ugly now. They grow so fast that I have to prune them every year or the branches will rub on the roof and hang over my neighbor's yard.

I transplanted my tomato seedlings into individual pots. They're getting true leaves now. I've got them sitting outside in the sun covered with a 50 percent shade cloth. I bring them in each night.

Most of the birds have gone somewhere else. Still a bunch of hummers and my towhees, but hardly any sparrows or other birds. I hope they come back in the Spring. I'm still putting out oatmeal for the towhees. They come right into the patio with me sitting there. I guess they've decided I'm pretty harmless. They're right.

I did see a lizard yesterday, but the frog has been silent. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote: "And so it goes".
 
Grampa Don said:
Freaky weather. Yesterday it got to 86 and they're predicting today it will reach 90. The humidity is about 20 percent with a breeze coming from the desert. Two weeks ago my tree trimmers got rained out, but they came back last week and did the job. So, my mulberries are looking pretty ugly now. They grow so fast that I have to prune them every year or the branches will rub on the roof and hang over my neighbor's yard.

I transplanted my tomato seedlings into individual pots. They're getting true leaves now. I've got them sitting outside in the sun covered with a 50 percent shade cloth. I bring them in each night.

Most of the birds have gone somewhere else. Still a bunch of hummers and my towhees, but hardly any sparrows or other birds. I hope they come back in the Spring. I'm still putting out oatmeal for the towhees. They come right into the patio with me sitting there. I guess they've decided I'm pretty harmless. They're right.

I did see a lizard yesterday, but the frog has been silent. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote: "And so it goes".
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What type of tomatoes are you growing?
 
My pomegranate is beginning to leaf out already, maybe because of the heat we've been having. It still has a few of the old leaves on it.

leaf out.JPG

Here are some photos that aren't new, but I want to share a few of the insect visitors I've had. The first one is a morning glory plume moth resting on my kitchen door screen. The skinny wings fold out when it wants to fly.

Morning-glory Plume Moth.JPG

Next is a katydid on my patio cupboard. I rotated the photo to make it upright. Pretty thing.

katydid.lJPG.JPG

This is a cute little leaf beetle. He's only about a cm long. See his little black eyes?

leaf beetle.JPG

And finally, a spider mite on the bottom of a geranium leaf. This was taken through my microscope. Did you know that geranium leaves were spiky underneath?

spider mite 2.jpg
 
Grampa Don said:
My pomegranate is beginning to leaf out already, maybe because of the heat we've been having. It still has a few of the old leaves on it.

View attachment 484533

Here are some photos that aren't new, but I want to share a few of the insect visitors I've had. The first one is a morning glory plume moth resting on my kitchen door screen. The skinny wings fold out when it wants to fly.

View attachment 484534

Next is a katydid on my patio cupboard. I rotated the photo to make it upright. Pretty thing.

View attachment 484536

This is a cute little leaf beetle. He's only about a cm long. See his little black eyes?

View attachment 484538

And finally, a spider mite on the bottom of a geranium leaf. This was taken through my microscope. Did you know that geranium leaves were spiky underneath?

View attachment 484542
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Those are amazing pictures, especially the last. I enjoy these change in perspective shots.
 
Grampa Don said:
Freaky weather. Yesterday it got to 86 and they're predicting today it will reach 90. The humidity is about 20 percent with a breeze coming from the desert. Two weeks ago my tree trimmers got rained out, but they came back last week and did the job. So, my mulberries are looking pretty ugly now. They grow so fast that I have to prune them every year or the branches will rub on the roof and hang over my neighbor's yard.

I transplanted my tomato seedlings into individual pots. They're getting true leaves now. I've got them sitting outside in the sun covered with a 50 percent shade cloth. I bring them in each night.

Most of the birds have gone somewhere else. Still a bunch of hummers and my towhees, but hardly any sparrows or other birds. I hope they come back in the Spring. I'm still putting out oatmeal for the towhees. They come right into the patio with me sitting there. I guess they've decided I'm pretty harmless. They're right.

I did see a lizard yesterday, but the frog has been silent. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote: "And so it goes".
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Oh Don such fine weather you have. It's 3 degrees f here.

Years ago, I had a wonderful flower garden and the guy next door had a large vegetable garden. I was used to those wonderful tomatoes and etc. One year I started plum tomatoes from seed, the kind we cook with and he found a corner he let me plant them in. It was right next to his horse's manure pile. We had a great crop!

You're lucky you can continue. Here's to many tomatoes for you.
 
RadishRose said:
Oh Don such fine weather you have. It's 3 degrees f here.

Years ago, I had a wonderful flower garden and the guy next door had a large vegetable garden. I was used to those wonderful tomatoes and etc. One year I started plum tomatoes from seed, the kind we cook with and he found a corner he let me plant them in. It was right next to his horse's manure pile. We had a great crop!

You're lucky you can continue. Here's to many tomatoes for you.
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Thank you, Rose. I can't imagine what 3 degrees must be like. The coldest I was ever in was 18 degrees at a high school football game in the high desert and I about froze in the stands.
 
I’ve spent my entire life in the LA basin, so I don’t have much experience with snow or cold weather. I’ve only seen snow falling twice, once on a business trip to Boston there were a few flakes, and once while coming back from a visit with my brother in the high desert it started snowing in the Cajon pass. I didn’t have chains and I was afraid the windshield wipers were going to stop. It was scary. I got behind a bus and followed it down to flatter, warmer terrain.

When I was nine on a visit to my grandparents in Illinois there was a light snow overnight. Grandma gathered some up and made snow cones with maple syrup. In 1949 there was a freak storm that left a little snow locally. We kids scraped up enough to make a few snowballs.

In the boy scouts there were some snow drifts in the high sierras during a July camping trip, and as a teen I played in the snow in our local mountains a few times. That’s the only time I’ve ridden a sled or a toboggan. The sled was fun. The toboggan was a killer.

When our boys came along we took them to the snow a few times. Usually that didn’t last long because we didn’t have proper boots and feet got cold.

So, I feel like I’ve missed something. Snow can be really pretty. I sometimes get a glimpse of it on the San Gabriel mountains from my back yard after a storm. Christmas is when I really feel left out. No Frosty the snowman or sleigh rides here. I know it’s bad if you get too much. A lot of things are bad in excess. Anyway, I do regret I’ll never know a Winter wonderland.

Big Bear.jpg
 
Clear sky and warm again this morning. There was a black bumble bee on the neighbor's flowers that hang over the fence and a painted lady butterfly fluttered by. I think my towhees may be molting. A couple of them had ruffled feathers on their tail and back.

The tomato seedlings are doing OK.

seedlings.JPG

I mentioned my man cave in the garage. When my granddaughter was little she made a sign for the doorway. It's still there.

dusty sign.JPG

As you can see, her name is Dusty. It's not a name I would give a little girl, but she seems happy with it.

Here's some trivia. You may think this pipe is for smoking opium. It's not. It's a traditional Japanese tobacco pipe. It's called a kiseru. I picked it up in Japan in the 60's. It takes just a pinch of finely sliced tobacco, and obviously it's a short smoke. When tobacco was introduced to Japan it was very expensive and only the wealthy could afford it. This is a cheap one, but some are very fancy and costly. The pipe with the bent stem is the one I smoked in the Navy.

Kiseru.JPG
 
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Pretty good rain last night. Cloudy but clearing today with a little sun.

Yesterday I noticed a tiny speck on my bathroom wall that moved. I captured it in a pill bottle and put it in the freezer overnight. Today I took it out and examined it with a magnifier. It is a tiny beetle just a little over 1mm long. I took this photo through my microscope and did a Google search on it.

beetle1.jpg

It's a common carpet beetle. I've never seen one before. The beetle only lives a couple days and is harmless. But, its larva lives a couple years and eats organic fibers, leather, and photographs. And the larva isn't much larger than the beetle and looks like a tiny wooly caterpillar.

Hopefully this guy just stumbled into my house and I don't have an infestation to worry about. So now I have to be on the lookout for tiny specks that move.

It's always something.
 

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