It's Too Hot

It's too hot. I just ran in the morning which is something I hate to do. All of the plants are looking pathetic. So here is a quick summary.

What's Going Well

- Bees, we have lots of honey bees in the garden and around the yard and they look healthy. The flowers are doing a good job of keeping them coming in.

- Sorry that's it.

What's Not Going so Well

- The yard is dead or hopefully just dormant. I have been watering but it is too hot for the young roots. We have huge completely brown patches.

- The garden is slowly dying. We are still getting some cucumbers and peppers that set before the heat. Nothing has set since it got hot.

- The poor worms are starting to die from the heat. We moved them to a shaded area next to the garage and I built a more open enclosure. Today I looked and found a bunch of lethargic smaller worms but nobody very big. Poor worms.

- I am having really spotty germination on all of the fall crops. The broccoli and beans just don't want to take and the carrots are moving slow. I am getting close to just ripping everything out and waiting for next year.

Updates and Stuff

It's too hot and I haven't had much energy to do a good post lately. The yard and garden are looking a little beat. It has been in the 90s for weeks with almost no rain and we can't keep up with the watering. The entire yard is about to go dormant with lots of other plants looking like death.

Ok, moving on to more fun things. Sam qualified for the USA Triathlon age group national championships and will be traveling to Vermont next month to complete, pretty cool. We did a triathlon last weekend. Sam looked great and I about died. I am thinking racing for me means long slow events.

The birds have all hatched their second set of chicks for the year. We have baby cardinals, blue jays, and lots of awkward robins all screaming for some food. Here is a dad watching one look for food on the patio.

The worms got a major upgrade. They have been pooping machines lately but with the hot weather the can o' worms was just too hot. I was picking more than a few jumpers from the bottom catch tray as they tried to go deeper to stay cool. I built them a fully exposed rolling worm condo. It might just be me but I think they are really working harder in the new setup. It is amazing how much scrap food a bag full of worms can eat.
Even with the sickly garden the cucumbers outgrew their trellis. I built some boxes to help get them on the roof. Hopefully I will be picking cucumbers from the roof.

Speaking of cucumbers, one of my co-workers planted some Parisian pickling cucumbers and has felt sorry for my garden, so I have gotten a few. Again the crock came out and I tried another fermented pickle recipe. It was a bit salty but good. Also in the back, I made carrot and beet seed mats for the garden out of paper towels. I have never used seed mats before so we will see.

The pickles got washed to get rid of some of the saltiness and packed into jars. I haven't found a recipe for canning that doesn't require cooking all of the crunch out so these went in the frig. I will still tweek the recipe a little but unlike last year's attempt these I can eat.

Harvest Monday (07-11-11)

This weekend was hot but Sam and I managed to spend just about the entire weekend outside working out. Saturday I paced a friend through his first trail run, the 10 mile Psycho Psummer race and had a blast. Then on Sunday we did a 25 mile bike ride in 96+ degree weather and it wasn't too bad, or maybe I got a little too much sun.

Sunday afternoon I watered and fertilized. The tomatoes are still looking beat and our neighbor's tomatoes got cleaned out. I am thinking about introducing a bobcat. Well, the color for harvest Monday this week is green. The bean plants don't get great sun and are pretty funky looking. The beans are mostly straight and look pretty good. The cucumbers and coming along and the sour gherkins are loaded. Two cucumbers are 25 oz, 23 sour gherkins are 1.6 oz. Weight wise they have a long way to go.

Trials, Tribulations, and G@DD@MN F@#K%NG SQUIRRELS!!!

So while we have lots of projects to get going, I haven't really started yet. The electrical is wired in the downstairs bathroom, that's progress right? Last night I stopped over to take a tour of Robin Hood's Hideaway and that got me inspired to get some work done. But, until then here is a general garden post.

The red Belgian peppers are really coming along. These are actually hot peppers that were bred to be sweet. Since we haven't had any luck growing traditional bell peppers I thought these were worth a try. They stay pale yellow until full size then turn red. They look good and I really have high hopes.

This has really been a tough year for tomatoes. All of the heirlooms got wiped out by spray, virus, sickness, something. The remaining ones aren't looking so good. I can't seem to get ahead of the blight working it's way from the bottom up, all the new leaves are misshapen and funky, and I have a squirrel with a taste for tomatoes. Every morning I go out and see loads of half eaten tomatoes all over the garden and occasionally I chase the squirrel out of the garden. I am pretty sure it is only one that is causing me problems. They eat the big green tomatoes and chew off the stalks to get them down. My poor tomatoes look terrible.

Now pretty much everyone close to us has had problems with squirrels and has a solution to my problems. So before you provide solutions here is what hasn't worked.

1. Sprays: hot pepper, black pepper, garlic, lemon juice...... I have sprayed these around the garden, on the plants, on the fruit, to no effect. I mean this stuff is so hot that the blow back from application just about kills me.

2. Dangly things: Hang CDs or plastic bags out to scare them away. Right, not a chance of working.

3. Blood meal: The smell is supposed to keep them away. Besides providing way too much nitrogen, this didn't work at all.

4. Put water out: ok they eat tomatoes because they are thirsty. Bullsh$t, they eat tomatoes to piss me off. Water hasn't helped.

5. Feed them: Seem like a good idea until you have way more squirrels, chipmunks, and mice than ever before. I am still trapping rodents from this little experiment earlier in the year. I have relocated 21 chipmunks and 6 squirrels. I am the crazy guy that brings caged animals with him to work.

Here is my second to last solution. This is a motion activated sprinkler. I put it in yesterday and was excited that there were no new half eaten tomatoes in the garden this morning. Then I realized there is not a single tomato left in the garden. When I bought this the very nice sales clerk at the hardware store wouldn't let me leave without showing me a very nice pellet gun with a scope. Trust me, it is under serious consideration at this point.
Ok, moving on to something a little more pleasant. The cucumbers are doing very well. The left are the regular and the right are the gherkins. Yes they are growing on the roof.

The Mexican sour gherkins are loaded with ripe fruit. Here is one for scale. They are small, sour, and taste a little like lemons.

The straight eights did great for us last year. Looks like at least one is ready to go.

Even up against the house with limited sun, the fennel is ready.

Seems like I planted the wildflower bed just a little tight.

End of June Garden Update

Things in the garden are going well, like the lettuce. Things in the garden aren't going so well, like the tomatoes. This will end up being a really light year for tomatoes. Between the plants getting sick and the squirrels eating the green tomatoes we might not get any.

I was planning on harvesting the garlic on 4th of July but they were looking brown and the peppers needed more sun. 45 heads of garlic later we are in business. I roasted all of them on Sunday. Some got used in soup and the rest frozen for later. I went through and thinned a couple carrots. I only planted atomic red, and boy are they red.

The peppers are doing well. They are happy to have the garlic out and now can get full sun.

Once again the cucumbers are doing great. Both kinds have reached the gutter. There are lots of little babies on the eating cucumbers and probably a 1000 on the mexican sour gherkins. I hope those are good.

A Great Weekend in San Francisco Day 3: Redwoods and Beer

Redwoods and Beer, Redwoods and Beer, Redwoods and Beer

Redwoods in the lightning, redwoods in the lightning, redwoods in the rain

Ok, moving on. Our third day was just as much fun as the first two. We rented a car and headed north. It was still foggy and pretty quiet as we headed towards the Muir Woods.

The Muir Woods are supposed to be crazy this time of year so we got on the road early. At 10am all of the parking was full but we did find a spot on the road.
The redwoods are like no other place we have been. The trees are huge and all of the other plants are ancient underneath. All of the light green in the pictures is new growth, clearly they were happy trees.

There are lots of good hiding spots.

We parked right next to the Dipsea trail, on the morning of the Dipsea trail race. We even saw some runners on the trail. The Dipsea is the oldest trail race in the country and one of the hardest to get into.

I was there too. We did run 30 feet on the trail and now can say we ran the Dipsea.

And from the Muir Woods we headed to the Lagunitas brewery in Petaluma. Lagunitas is an especially magical beer that we have recently started enjoying in Kansas City. Since we were close there was no better time to visit. When I contact them about a tour the answer was "sure stop by when you are in town, we will be drinking on the patio." Hmmm, maybe our kind of place.

Their clubhouse overlooking the loading floor looks like every college basement.

Let's get this started.

I have been on a few brewery tours and this one was the most "behind the scenes." Lagunitas is getting ready for a couple week shutdown for and expansion. So they are running full time trying to build up a back supply and it was a little crazy for a Sunday afternoon. Yeah, that is a red homemade dress on backwards. Just say the people there were very interesting.

Brewing a batch of IPA.

This is a brewery that has grown in popularity very quickly. They have equipment everywhere.

Next to the brewery is the taproom and small restaurant. We got a few samplers and ended up tasting everything.

Mmmm beer chili nachos.

The locals come out on Sunday afternoons to hang out on the patio and drink beer, my kind of town.

Because, Sunday afternoons they have live music. This was a great end to the trip sitting in the California sun drinking beer and listening to music.

In Sonoma county even the view from the parking lot is great.

Last but not least, our friend Jenn flew in from Hawaii. We stopped by her parent's house on the way back to the city. Jenn and her husband Ian left Kansas City about a year ago. It was great to catch up.

Three great days in California. It has taken much longer recover and finally get the pictures posted.

A Great Weekend in San Francisco Day 2

Last Saturday was a fantastic and busy day in the bay. The day began early with some sightseeing and ended up with Dispatch at the Greek Theater at UC Berkeley.

It was pretty foggy most of the time with patches of sun.
We toured the Japanese garden at Golden Gate Park. It is the largest Japanese garden outside of Japan and worth seeing.

It was originally well planned and has ended up with lots of other Asian influences over the years. Here is a zen garden.

The pagoda is leftover from the Asian exposition.

We stopped by the Ferry terminal building to grab some breakfast. It is full of all kinds of local foods. Saturday morning has one of the best farmer's markets ever. We grabbed an egg sandwich at the cowgirl creamery.

MMMMM so good.

Great farmer's market.

We watched some traffic on Lombard.

Still sunny.

Then we swung by pier 39 to watch the sea lions.

And onto UC Berkeley. It's funny because the campus looks a lot like Iowa State's since they were designed by the same person.

And the reason we were in San Francisco. Dispatch hasn't gone on tour in 11 years and hasn't really played together since the last dispatch in 2004. When they announced the tour we tried to get tickets as they opened across the country. Everything sold out before I could get tickets until California. The Greek Theater at Berkeley is a great venue.

I set up to take the best picture ever, and it was spoiled by some bystander.

We got great seats.

We brought the good camera and the big lens took some great pictures in the dark.

They played the encore from the lawn in the back, we were very close.

Best concert ever.

The setlist was amazing, they played 21 songs.