a quiet buzz

Well, my crazy, freecycling husband came home with a new lawn mower the other day! It's a rechargeable electric mower. I was on the phone in the garden when he unloaded it and turned it on. Wow! is that thing quiet. It starts right up and just purrs across the lawn. It's so quiet that I wonder about it's power. It was free which is always my favorite price and will replace the gas mower that hates me. Jonathan always has to start the gas mower for me. It makes me feel like some helpless little girl and that's just not okay. So now I have a happy new mower to mow my husbands lawn.

Speaking of Jonathan and buzzing, he's been helping the bees ready themselves for Winter. He checked in on them last week and found that one hive had plenty of honey but not enough brood and the other had plenty of brood but not enough honey. He's been feeding them the appropriate sugar solutions to help them find their balance. He pulled out a couple of frames and we bottled one jar of honey. It was our first and it's gorgeous! I cannot wait until Spring when we can harvest some more.

We haven't lugged the fountain out of the truck yet but will have to this weekend as I need the truck to transport the dogs to the dogsitter (going to Disneyland, yay). Hopefully, when we get home, we'll have some time to start weeding the West garden and get some flower seeds planted for Spring. The bees are going to love the selection. I'm thinking I'll add an All-in-one Almond tree too. It'll make tons of early blossoms for the girls to work.

Jonathan has decided not to harvest pollen from either hive. He feels like it's just not nice. I say that we sure could use the money but he's right. The bees will have to work extra hard to make up for what we steal. We'll only pull honey when they need the room. If you let them get too cramped, they'll swarm and depart. We want our happy girls to stay put so we'll make sure they have everything they need.

I'm working on one of my many "jobs" this week. I'm making artisinal chocolates for Thanksgiving and an upcoming wedding. It's busy work and I won't be in the garden until it's done.

I'll post on the olla experiment soon. So far, so good.

The Olla experiment

I'm constantly on the search for really great lazy gardener tools. I've been reading about Ollas but thought that the cost seemed prohibitive. I decided to try to fashion some of my own. I don't have a pottery wheel or a kiln so I went to Home Depot for some terracotta pots. They were $.98 each. I also bought some silicone sealant for about 5 bucks. So, for around $11, I built 5 ollas.

I've read that you should drill out the top hole a bit so that you can see when they need to be filled. I worried that I would shatter the pot if I tried to enlarge the hole. Plus, then they'd be more likely to fill with soil and stuff once planted. I left the hole as is but added a chunk of styrofoam inside the olla. I'm hoping that once filled with water, the foam will float to the top and it's whitey whiteness will be easily seen. This should make checking the water level rather simple (I think).


I picked all of the green tomatoes and pulled out the old tomato plants. I removed all of the soil from the galvanized troughs and moved them closer to the patio. I then refilled them. They hold a surprising amount of soil those things. I made the mistake with the first one to remove only most of the soil and my back is sore today. I also began to move the brick path AGAIN. I just can't quite figure out the perfect route. It'll come to me soon.





Into the newly moved troughs will go some new plants (I'm off to the nursery today) and the new ollas. In one trough, one medium olla. In another trough, 2 medium ollas. In the third trough (a shorter one) two small ollas. I'll keep an eye on the plants for the season to try to determine the ideal olla placement.

I've also been wondering about moving the sunset maple I planted 5 years ago. I have a friend with an array of excavation equipment and I think I'll call him to see if it's even do-able. I realized that it's the perfect tree for the back corner where the neighbor removed all the trees last week. Plus, moving it means that we could expand our gate to include a driveway dip in the sidewalk. This would make motorcycle movement a whole lot easier. We're still working on restoring my old Honda but there's a bike for Jonathan and a bike for the boy (when he's ready) in the shed. You just never know when you might need a set of motorcycles! Now I need to squirrel away some gasoline for them. hee hee, I've lost my mind.

Is Causal Green a crayola color?

We have some things in common with some of the other urban farming bloggers out there. We feel good when we can feed ourselves. It makes us feel strong and powerful even. We like that we can achieve this strength while respecting the earth and mother nature. We enjoy the idea that we have something to contribute, to share, to trade. But the truth is that we don’t want to make all the sacrifices. We, like our LA blogging comrades, enjoy a nice cocktail. Not sure one can buy organic vodka. We don’t want to work so hard to make it all work. And, we don’t think one has to work so hard. We hope to prove it.

Water is a constant issue that I struggle with. I’d love to use the water flowing down my shower drain while it warms up. I could divert the whole shower to a holding tank or right out into the garden. "Hang on, garden, here comes the grey water!" However, if I can’t use grey water on my food crops or what’s left of my lawn then I’ve very little use for it. Sure, I could fill buckets in the shower with the clean, warming water and then carry those through the house to the herb garden. But, I don’t want to carry buckets full of water through the house, over the wood floors, and out into the garden. A great buffalo of a dog will surely trip me and gallons of water will go splashing through the house. Then the little dog will come prancing through and all the dirt on his paws will turn to mud which he will promptly put all over the Ikea (thank goodness for slipcovers) couch. Then the boy will wander through and decide to run his hotwheels through the “carwash”. Plus, what do you do with the bucket/s while you’re actually in the shower? Carry it/them into the bathroom while standing there naked, leaving it/them in the middle of the tiny room so you can trip over it/them on your way out? Or drop your towel into it/them? I just don’t think so.
If someone could invent a lever system actually inside the shower enclosure that allows the clean water produced while waiting for the shower to "warm up" to be diverted directly into the garden onto any plant that would be fantastic. Easy! Enter bathroom, reach in, turn on diversion lever, turn on Hot water, take off clothes, have conversation with child about toothpaste, step in, turn off diversion lever, adjust temperature, shampoo rinse repeat.
And what about irrigation? Fill your garden with plastic tubes and hoses so that you can use less water and spend less time watering? I’m not so sure about all that plastic. Aren't I supposed to be using less plastic? Dig a bunch of trenches and lay pipe for some serious bigboy sprinklers? Well, sure, but what of the cost and the time, and the wife who is notorious for changing her mind? I love the little clay watering vessels you plant in your boxes. They’re called Ollas and everything I read sounds great. You can see them or buy them while supporting an amazing homesteading family here…Ollas

The problem for me is the price. At $25 each with approximately 3 large ones needed in an 8x4 raised bed, I can’t afford them. I asked my kiln owning friend Heather and she says they'd be quite inexpensive to make. If one had the skills and the tools!
I saw one website which showed a thrifty gardener using silicone to attach 2 terra cotta pots together. He sealed the drainage hole on one pot and buried that end. You then use the remaining hole to fill. Maybe it’ll work. That would run you approximately $10 to $15 for the pots and a tube of silicone. Then you have silicone in your garden and all over your hands and probably your patio as well. I don’t know. I think I’ll try it in one of my new beds and let y’all know if it works. But, what do you use for things that are grown in the dirt, not in fancy soil filled beds? What about the herbs and artichokes with are tucked in between lavendar and snapdragons surrounding the lawn? Must I have 1 olla for every other plant? Who could afford that? So then we’re back to hand watering which, when I’m in charge leads to stress, or rubber and plastic running through the garden. Yes, I could make those self watering containers out of 5 gallon buckets like the 215 growers use. But, they’re ugly. Yes, you heard me, ugly. Ugly is a problem. They’re small too. I don’t want 40 million of those ugly things all over my garden. Nope. I must research more options.
Lucky for me there's a class being offered at Daily Acts in 2 weeks. I'll check it out and report back.