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I had some extra greens yesterday from my CSA box.  So I casually arranged them in a canning jar and popped in a wild flower from our garden.  This bouquet makes me so happy!  Its only been 24 hours and already its wilting.  Spring is so fleeting!

Larva of the White-lined sphinx moth, Hyles lineate

[photos by John Kashuba]

I don’t have a vegetable garden, or a flower garden, or even an herb garden, but I still wanted to bring some of the outside inside this morning.

My inspiration came from the gorgeous arrangement I received for Valentine’s Day from Flora Grubb. I just love the idea of using the rosette succulents in an display!

Now that the weather has been better, we have been spending more time in the back yard. I’ve ripped up a big ugly bush/tree that was taking up valuable yard space and replaced it with a bed of shade plants. The area is a bit raised from ground level, so I had a carpenter build me a cute little retaining wall out of that fancy modern hardwood, Ipe. According to the history channel it’s fire rating is the same as concrete! I’ll post photos once I’ve finished putting in all the plants. This past weekend Dallas and I put in the 3 giant Hostas, but I have some smaller filler plants to install still. These sorts of projects get dragged out for a while when there is a kid involved.

Here he is sitting in his little bouncy chair by the lavender.

He has been getting increasingly more mobile. He is not crawling or pulling himself up yet, but he does somehow move around just by rolling and sitting and rolling and sitting. Every once in a while he’ll smack his head on the floor which makes mom freak out on the inside, but he handles it all in stride.

Eating is the current focus. I’d love to wean him sooner than later. I figure it is a long road ahead, so I’m going to start trying now. Baby steps. He eats 3 “solid” meals a day, and has for a while now. These meals make up a good amount of his total food intake. For breakfast today he had pureed blueberries with smooshed banana and multi-grain cereal. I tried to get him to eat the smooshed banana chunks with his fingers off the tray, but no go. He just pulled them off his tray and threw them on the floor then demanded real food. Ugh. Same thing happened when I offered him tofu pieces, and cereal soaked in milk. Moving on from purees is a whole other thing I realize.

Yesterday I introduced him to mango puree. He hated the first spoonful, but he always squishes his face at the first spoonful of anything (even the beloved apple). So I gave him a second spoonful – same reaction. Then he made a funny sound and Blegggha… He threw up all over himself, the highchair, and the floor. Guess mangos are a no-go. It hadn’t even occurred to me they would be offensive.

I was able to harvest some tomatoes from the garden today. Our friend Josh gave us a few plants several months ago. It takes patience, sun, heat, and a lot of luck to grow tomatoes in San Francisco. I’m happy I have at least these to show for my efforts. Meanwhile, Josh’s plants have been producing enough to supply supermarkets all over the bay area for weeks now (he lives in sunny South Bay). 

 

A couple pretty leaf photos from my Uncle David’s back yard.

I just went down to Mountain View this week and picked out our new tree!  As you may remember, back in January we lost a tree in our yard.  It was a sad occasion and it has been a process to get to this point.  

First we had guys come out to haul away the tree – which took forever because half of SF had trees down, and since ours wasn’t coming through a wall on our house or trapping our newborn baby underneath, we weren’t considered a priority. After that we had the tree people over with their special, and very loud, machine to grind and remove the stump.  

Then the search for a replacement began.  I wanted the same kind of tree (Geijera Parviflora), but was unable to locate one locally and the correct size (24″ box). After a couple months of that I finally gave up and set my sights on a fruitless Olive. Another couple months have gone by with some hope sprinkled in there, but not until this week did I actually meet the tree that will be in my yard.  Its all very exciting.  

Without further adieu, meet the new addition to our backyard…

(its the one on the left)

There was talk of getting both the above trees, but after some thinking I decided that just the one will be enough.  The tree will be delivered and planted on Monday afternoon.   Then after that I’ll be able to finish the beds underneath with lavender and maybe some rosemary.  I’m going to do the whole Mediterranean thing in that sunny spot in the yard.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

We are finally starting to make our house OUR house. Its been 3 years and we are doing some of the things we meant to do a long time ago. We painted (had painted), our dining room, hallway, and hallway doors. What a difference it has made!

The spiffication process also included some yard work.  It is by no means complete, but we have made some changes.  The most dramatic of which is more flagstone patio.  We originally had 3 raised planter beds.  We ripped out 2 to make more room for entertaining.  Those 2 boxes never got enough sunlight to grow anything useful anyway.  Now when we sit on our new patio it feels like we are actually in the garden, not just looking over at it.

 

The tree, stump, and broken bush have all been cleared out. Its time to prep the ground for new plantings. We will most likely get the same kind of tree which is an Australian Willow, then plant some drought tolerant plants in the bed around it – probably lavender.

It seems the tree was getting too much water and the base was starting to rot out. When we moved in to this house someone had already installed an irrigation system in the yard. We ripped out what we could by hand, and the stump grinder finished the work. So the area now is clear and ready for some drought tolerant plants. I’m thinking of doing a Mediterranean/Napa style garden. We’ll see.
At any rate, I’m embracing the new start the storm has forced on me.

It is a super stormy day here. There are trees and powerlines down all over the city.
While sitting here at my computer we lost one of our beloved trees. 8-(

It was my favorite tree and such a perfect visual block to our 3 story neighbors.
The tree will be greatly missed.

Its hard to tell from the photo, but the tree also took down part of the fence. The post is broken and the fence is way out of whack. I’m not sure when the rain will let up and we can take care of the damage. Hopefully by next week.