Buddy had the firepit left over from SCA days, and he bought sand to put in the bottom. Rick dug out fire bricks from the ones scattered around. We cleared some overhanging branches to provide a "chimney." That's when we also found the great view of the maple and dogwood trees in the neighbor's yard. We're burning all the dead fruitwood that everyone helped cut off. And of course, Rick C was on hand to tell me I wasn't starting the fire correctly. And Buddy got us some long fireplace matches so we wouldn't set ourselves on fire trying to reach over the sides with a lighter.
Speaking of that maple... a week ago it was a glorious pillar of pure yellow. Now every leaf is gone (and most of them are now decorating our yard).
We've really hit full winter now, with it getting dark before 5 pm, making weeknights rough for farming. We can still sit around the firepit but it's not going to be as pleasant. Fortunately we had a good 8 months, and it will really only be a couple months of cold and wet to get through before it's nice again. The leaves in front of our house are still lovely, and I went out to try to gather leaves for waxing, but while they are in full color, they aren't dropping much yet, limiting the amount I could collect to the lowest branches. Of course, the pistache trees are dropping plenty of berries. In fact, that's a good seasonal signal: the berries start to drop just when the rains begin.
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Weather Note
Mid November is definitely into wet winter weather. In fact, when the pistache trees start dropping berries, that's usually when it rains. After a glorious sunny week, we got some rain starting last night, and today is cloudy. Temperatures are getting into the high 30s at night, and not warming much past 50 in the day. By now, anything fall planted should be at maturity because there won't be a lot of growth. This is when we hope to have things "holding" in the garden.
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I took advantage of the mild weather last week to plant some pansies. I put brick rings around the fruit trees, and put in some pansies and alyssum for spot color. This looks nice against the mulch, and on the lawn sides, the bricks are set in nicely to form a mow strip.
The oranges are fattening up. The tree is so laden that we had to prop it up with a stick in one area. We'll probably prune it a bit to even that growth out so it can better support itself.
The broccoli is coming along nicely, with nice heads forming. The cabbage is also almost to harvest size. This is just about exactly the time the fall harvested crops should be ready, and honestly, we could have put them in even earlier. It just doesn't seem like time to plant "cool-weather" crops when it's 105 out.
The greens are thriving and should be a good source of food over the winter. Late last week I planted the last section of new area in a mix of greens: mustard, chard, and bok choi. And I finally got the last of the onion and leek starts in. We are going to have a LOT of onions, which is fantastic because just about every recipe I make starts with "Saute an onion and..."
Here's Rick surveying the farm on a recent sunny day.
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Camera Note
Rick and I just got new Droid phones, with built in cameras that seem pretty nice. I'm hoping to be able to just use the phone camera from now on. We'll have to see if the picture quality suffers at all. The phone camera is 5 megapixels, while the camera is 7.5 but I don't think that will make much difference for the blog. And I pretty much shoot on automatic settings anyway. We'll just have to see how it works out.
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