Birds in Fall

Chestnut Backed Chickadee

Male House Finch

American Robin

Hermit Thrush

Dark Eyed Junco

Leaves have thinned. It was great standing under a tree and being able to watch (and take pictures of) birds. Some of them were curious and would look back at me for a while, giving me an opportunity to take their picture. Since there is not much food for the birds, I start putting grains in the bird feeder around thanksgiving for the birds which stay back here during the winter. Some of them come to feed. Others find the patio a good place to rest and shelter themselves from the rain.

Chrysanthemum

The mums are in the bloom. We got these 3 years ago in the fall. I divide them in the spring and keep trimming them to avoid them from being leggy.

Last year, the winter rain destroyed the flowers. So, this year they are under a tree.
The nasturtium is still blooming orange flowers in the background and has climbed up the tree.

The mums make good cut flowers as they last for very long in the flower pots.
The slugs don't like to hang around these plants.

New Lawn

Here are a few pictures of new lawn.

Black Phoebe

This black bird keeps visiting our garden, especially in the morning. It is alone.

It is called Black Phoebe and is usually found near water. Its diet is mainly insects.

Sept 29 Update:

The bird is usually by itself in the yard. These days it hangs around tomato plants and
has been drinking tomato juice from a couple of tomatoes. Guess, I also have a natural insect control ...
This picture was taken through a (not well cleaned) window.. so, it is a little blurred.

Full Moon Night

Full moon tonight... Moon was looking nice!

Fall Gardening in the Bay Area

Here is a link to a fall gardening blog for the bay area.

I already notice some of the Chrisanthamums have little flowers in the garden.
It is time to think what is going to replace the tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers in the
vegetable beds come October.

Artichoke

An artichoke flower

Artichokes ..ready to be eaten

A couple of artichokes from the garden. The flower looks interesting too...

How to eat artichokes : follow this link.

Tomatoes

The first big tomatoes (Early Girl variety) are ripe today. For the last couple of weeks we have been getting the salad tomatoes (Sweet 100 variety). It is only this week that we can get a handful of them off from a couple of cherry tomato plants. They are delicious:

Gloriosa Daisy

Finally, one of them emerged out of the crowd of zinnia and marigold flowers.
What a beautiful flower... I am going to grow more of these for sure in the years to come.

A Humming bird was taking nectar from the Gladiolis flower while I was working in the garden today. Have started training the nasturtium to climb up on a string in the patio. A few tomatoes and cucumbers are ripe now. Also, the bell peppers are ready to eat. Enjoyed a couple of squash during the last camping trip to Lake Tahoe area. They go well with stir fried vegetables along with bell peppers.

Coopers Hawk

It is almost a year since the two baby Coopers Hawks visited our garden with their parents. They used to sit on the fence and use a ladder to hop up and down to the grassy area where the parents would teach them how to catch garden lizards. Since then, we have seen a good decline in the garden lizards around our yard. This is a picture from last year..

I will post a video later of the Hawks playing in the garden.

I think there is a little rat in the claws of the Hawk. I am not sure..

Blue Jay

There are more birds who love to eat the lawn seeds. I don't feel too bad about letting the lawn dry this year. Anyway, California is going through another drought season.

This blue bird, I think it is a blue jay (or a scrub jay?) , spent a couple of hours this morning feeding on the lawn seeds from the last cutting.

Sparrow on the Mailbox

It was a nice sight to behold this Sunday morning. About 20 house-sparrows were in a feeding frenzy for the seeds from dry cut lawn next to the mail box. They were playing a game to fly and occupy the vantage point on the mailbox.

Blackberry

I thought this was another vine of raspberry. It turned out to be a blackberry. I have no idea how it was planted here in this part of the garden among the raspberry vines. I suspect one of the frequent birds that comes here to eat the raspberries. The good thing about having blackberry in the garden is, it is just starting to produce blackberry fruits when the raspberry season is at its tail end.

Blackberry was used by the Greeks and the native American tribes for its medicinal properties. Not only the fruit is edible, the leaves, the roots and shoots can be used for medical uses. I hope to learn more about this interesting and useful plant.

Following is an excerpt from this website.

Blackberries were in olden days supposed to give protection against all 'evil runes,' if gathered at the right time of the moon. Since ancient Greek physicians prescribed the herb for gout, the leaves, roots, and even berries have been employed as a medicinal herb. The most common uses were for treating diarrhea, sore throats, and wounds. Native Americans made fiber, obtained from the stem, it was used to make a strong twine. Another use was as a huge barricade around the village made of piles of the thorny canes, for protection from 4 and 2 legged predators. A purple to dull blue dye is obtained from the fruit.

credit for the history of blackberry: www.altnature.com/gallery/Blackberry.htm

Gladiolus

Just returned from the east coast and what a pleasant sight to see the Gladiolus flowers blooming. Here is a picture. All the flowers in the strand are not yet bloomed..

Beautiful..way to be welcomed back home.

Flower Medley

The Marigold, Zinnia and Godetia flowers in bloom.

I was in the yard this afternoon looking at the flowers. The Godetias are in full bloom now. These flowers are also called "Good Bye to the Spring". We are close to the summer equinox now. Indeed the days are long. The tomato and cucumber plants are soaking in all the sun they can and growing rapidly.

While I was watching the flowers a humming bird came barely 2 feet and was trying to find nectar in one of the flowers while I watched it hover over the flower. It is the closest I have been to a humming bird. Cool !

Air Drying Clothes / Clothesline

Tumble drying clothes is one of the most energy intensive activities we do at home.

Typical dryer consumes 3000-5000Watt of power.

• Energy used for 40 min load @ 4000Watt : 2.5 kWatt hour
• Cost of Electricity at $0.11/kWhr: $0.32
• CO2 emission at 2 lb/kWhr : 5 lb of CO2.

To put this in perspective, 5 lb of CO2 is what 1/4 gallon of gasoline would leave in the air.Not much, if we think how much gas we are used to using up in the United States. Actually
for most Americans, driving is the biggest contributor to our Carbon foot-print.

This weekend, against the back-drop of ongoing global warming concern, I decided to opt for air-drying my laundry. On this warm summer day, it took just 30 minutes to dry most of the clothes. I am pleased with the results. Following image is of my socks drying on a contraption that I picked up in Japan. I was surprised to find people in that technically advanced culture using a clothesline. And, it is not even as warm as it is here in California.

Letting the sun and the wind do the drying..

Talking of carbon foot-print, I would like to write in detail, at a later time, about the solar attic vent-fan. It is amazing! We have noticed that it keeps the house about 8-10F cooler (than without the vent-fan) in the summer months.

Fire near Felton in Santa Cruz, Mountains

The forest fire near Felton in the Santa Cruz mountains has been sending smoke in the sky. So far the winds were blowing towards the pacific ocean. But, today the inland winds carried the smoke over the mountains to the Silicon Valley. I took these pictures from our street in the evening.




In the picture above, the smoke layer and the clearer sky are separated out in the lower part of the picture. The sun was looking red in color even at 4 pm. Birds in the backyard appeared a little confused. May be they thought the night is coming earlier. Some started foraging for food before night and others returned to their regular trees for sleeping.



The dust particles and soot in the smoke are efficient at absorbing at all but the longer red wavelengths. An interesting pre-mature "sunset" on Friday the 13th.

A picture of the fire reported by San Francisco Chronicle at
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?o=3&f=/c/a/2008/06/13/MN9F1187JC.DTL

Dragonfly

I "caught" this dragon-fly in the garden hovering near the tomato plants.

Pretty interesting structure of the wing.

Dragon-flies start their life in water. Their eyes are designed to capture motion in the close proximity. They have compound eyes. So, they offer excellent subjects for taking picture from a few feet away as long as you can stand still and have a good zoom lens on your camera.

Vegetables :first signs of fruit

Today, artichokes, cucumber, tomatoes and bell peppers are all having fruit. I am growing vegetables in a raised bed this year. It is a lot easier as I am no longer spending my time to keep the weeds and slugs out of the vegetable garden.

Here are a few pictures..



Early Girl Tomatoes



Bell Peppers




Cucumber

[June 15 Update on Cucumber ... It is almost 4-5 inches long, hiding behind the leaves]







Hot Pepper

Artichoke

Jujube

Starting in early May we get Jujube fruits. My Chinese and Korean friends love this fruit. It is sweet on the inside , a little more than 1.5cm in diameter. There are two seeds and the fruit has a skin like Mango that needs to be peeled off.
There is another variety of this fruit that is reddish in color.

The fruits are in a group of 8-20 fruits together and the leaves are long and dark green. The tree is full of fruits, more than we can eat. The squirrels are on the tree sometimes, looking for the seeds.



Jujube Fruit
(In the picture below, I have cut a fruit so that the seeds are visible).


Jujube fruits on the tree

Raspberries

We get a handful of fresh and sweet raspberries daily. It is fun picking them up and eating them fresh right off the plants (after rinsing them in water).

A number of birds visit the Raspberry plants too. The flowers attract bees and butterflies.

Raspberries



Raspberry plants have multiplied and are now rampant in one corner of the backyard. I will have to thin them out this fall.

Early Summer Flowers

This year I started the flowers from seed. Here are our first Marigold and Zinnia flowers.



Marigold



Zinnia

The roses are doing well too. They need constant care for fungal diseases at this time of the year.
Marigold is a very forgiving and disease resistant plant. It is relatively easy to transplant as well. Zinnia is more tricky. About 50% of transplants did fine. I use the Scott rooting and
transplanting solution to avoid shock for the transplants.

Nasturtium (June 07)

I found that it was fine to transplant the nasturtium after about 4-5 leaves. They did OK. I have put them in different parts of the yard, some in the pots and some in the ground. They are all doing fine. These are the ones from the pot in the porch growing in partial shade.



The leaves and flowers of nasturtium are edible. The leaves can be mixed in salads and the flowers are a rich source of vitamin C according to many websites.