Spring Blossoms

I wanted to share with you our Spring Flora. It's so wonderful to see the displays of God's Beauty. The images are mine and I have full copyright to them.

Green Cimbidiums

"Sunshine Blue" Blueberry

Orange Glowing Clivias

Navel Orange blossoms

"Crown of Thorns"Euphorbia milii(top), Red Kalanchoes(bottom)

Shinseiki Japanese Pear Blossoms

hot pink Verbena

innocently white Freesias

hot pink Pelargoniums. Most peopl call them Geraniums

Lavenders and Orange Gerbera Daisies

I don't know what these are called, but the open a medium purple then fade to white. So each tree has different shades of purple. It's gorgeous.

Red and Yellow Sparaxis. Thanks Katie for the the identification!

deep magenta Pelargonium

orange Kafir Lilies

More updates

The Strawberries are trickling in...

...and we have an early crop of Loquats coming in. Back in January, we had some flux in the weather where the temps were in the 90's and the trees thought it was spring already. So the Loquat blossomed and produced an early set. There's a second set that bloomed in early March as well and those are small fruitlets right now.

Here's a potato salad made with homegrown potatoes and parsley

More homegrown potatoes, kale and parsley in this soup.

Harvest Updates & Home Cooking

Here's some lovely kale I picked. It's not much, but it'll make a nice soup or a sautee.

Here's just some of the herbs I collected for making home-made "sausages". We're trying to live a more simple life, be less dependent on markets and stores. We still have a long way to go, but we were buying ready-made sausages that were 10 oz/box, costing $4.59 each and going through about 6 boxes a month. So, each ounce costs us $0.459. It may not sound like much, but add up 6 boxes and you have $27.50. I bought some ground turkey from the Co-Op, and made a 36 0z slab of patty that I cut up. Each ounce of that cost me $0.202, which is a 56% cost cut! So if I were to "buy" 6 boxes worth of my own sausages, I'd be paying $12.12. I can live with that! Sure it's more work, but any little bit of money will help, esp now-a-days.

Here's the finished "sausages" being cut up. I *could* roll the ground turkey mixture into nice little sausage shapes, but that'll take many more hours than spreading the stuff onto the sheet! I've gotta make things easy for myself since we make so much stuff from scratch already!

Last of the Kumquats

I just wrote the title and it reminded me of the movie title: "Last of the Mohicans". Imagine little Kumquats in Native American attire and you get the picture...lol. This is the last batch of kumquats since we transplanted the tree and it will be in shock for at least a year before it starts bearing fruit again. A few strawberries trying to blend in, maybe one of them is Kevin Costner...

Busy, busy, busy!

Here's both of our SunOvens. One is roasting a whole chicken, then other is baking some yams for snack-time.

Here are some of the plants that have moved FROM the HH house in the front rows, the back rows are plants that are supposed to go TO the HH house to fill the spaces of the plants we dug up. Why the swap? The front row plants are all edibles, the back row plants are not.

We're making room for 6 raised beds that are 3' x 8'. There will be a seventh bed that will be about 2' x 12'. Here's the first of the 6 that are going in. T is digging the ditches to make space for the second one. Thank you T for working so hard. (He had sore leg muscles the next days from digging so much!)

Here's another angle

In order to make room for the 6 large beds, we decided to move the Kumquat tree after much thought. We hope it will survive the transplant as it is getting warmer already. Dig, dig, dig and dig some more... whew!

Yes! We did it!

Harvest Updates

We are definitely enjoying spring here. Tangerines are coming into season now at the Hacienda Heights house. We are still tying up loose ends over there so we go often enough to harvest the fruits there too. The pics below are from West Covina's garden. The potatoes were dug early because we were seeing a lot of leave damage to the plants and thougt the land could be used better if other things are planted. We'll probably replace them with Peppers.

Strawberries, just a few...

Potatoes, lots of small ones

lots of new compost!

Here's all the smaller branches that were cut from the Pepper tree, in the back mound, and the front spread is all the lawn we dug up for the apple tree areas. We're letting them dry out some before we throw them into our large pit we dug in the former pond area. Happy the dog(golden retriever/cocker spaniel mix) is checking out the grass thinking this would be a great bed! Later on, when the grass was dried out, Happy and Lori (the cat) were found sleeping on the "hay", then Happy decided to poop on it. Geez pooping on your own bed...dogs...

New Stead Harvests

drying the Parsley

The New "Stead"

This is the front of the house before we cut the Pepper Tree down, it's pretty, but the tree was growing really fast.

I planted a little boy!

Preparing the bed for the apple trees

This is after we cut it down...it looks sad, very sad right now.

Here's the front yard with the Pepper tree stump, and the newly planted tiny Apple Trees.

Here's the backyard from one end of the yard.The white bare branches are the fig tree's. Behind it is the Navel Orange

Here it is from the other side. There used to be a pond where the rocks surround a patch of dirt. We are planning to plant pumpkins and summer squashes here.

Asian Pear Trees and Loquat Tree

Here's some Potato Plants growing

Kumquat tree

Homegrown, Homemade food

Garden Bok Choi

Garden Broccoli

Garden Stir Fry, Yum!

This is just a pot of veggie soup with veggies from the Farmer's Market and the Co-Op.

Here's some New Zealand Spinach, I love this thing, it is SOOO tough and prolific, it just about grows anywhere, unlike real spinach, which is quite delicate. This New Zealand stuff loves the summer heat too, so it can be grown almost year-round here.

I made a spinach omlet thingy with it, it was good!

February Rain

I'm sorry it's been a while since I last posted. We're still unpacking everything, trying to figure out where things will go, or how they'll even fit! I've also been juggling a Freelance job on the side, and now it's Planting Frezy time! We've been getting loads of rain for the month of Feb., which is GREAT! A little too much, but we sure needed it. The temps were getting rather cold so my Mom was going out in the evenings to put a tarp over the little potato sprouts.

I'm debating if I should start a new blog for the new location, or just keep this old one. We've moved our 2 apple trees, Beni Shogun Fuji and Akane. They are now planted boldly in the front yard. We plan to make a small orchard in the front. Our neighbors are rather too friendly, where they request our fruits, and pick eachother's fruits too, so we need to consider a fence/hedge. We don't want to shut out the neighbors, but just a little protection would be nice, since we are growing food more for sustainance, rather than hobby.

For the "new" garden, we’ve already planted about a month before: Broccoli, Cabbage, Kale, Potatoes. About 2 weeks ago we've sown the Rugen Alpine Strawberries(wild) into pots and they have sprouted nicely. Yesterday we finished planting out the strawberry plants we moved from the Hacienda Heigths house. And today we planted in pots: Basil, Purple Flats of Italy Onions, Roma Tomatoes, Kabocha Pumpkins, Cilantro, Mitsuba, Romaine Lettuce, Spinach, Red and Yellow Peppers, Black Eel Zucchini and some Violas. We are readying the newly expanded veggie garden and in need of buying organic compost to ammend the soil. It’s a busy time! We've brought over the Kyoho and Green Thompson Grape vines, Oregano, a few Gerbera Daisies, a Lavendar bush, Dokudami (Houttuynia cordata) and Seri(have no clue what it's called in English)we're still trying to figure out where we ought to transplant the Dwarf Cavendish Banana tree from the HH house as well. We still need to bring the Thyme, Mint, Blueberries, and some Garlic too.