Antlered Triumvirate

Lurking about they are.

the youngling

snagglehorn

brickshithouse

They better drop an antler again in the yard or I am taking up mule deer noodling/wrassling/shooting.

Gardening the mighty 1/5 acre

It has been a reasonable to great garden year. We had a reasonable winter, very dry late spring/early summer, and then a really good monsoon season starting in July and continuing through the present. The fire season up here was mercifully brief, especially compared to last years disaster. Fruit trees are doing great. The mule deer continue to be a problem and we put in some raised beds.

We had a sandy gopher and ant ridden patch in the middle of the front yard that we were able to grow some corn and pumpkins in last year. This year the ants were out of control and became extremely swarmy. After a couple of years of slowly escalating ant control methods we finally called an exterminator. I feel bad about that, but it allowed us to go in the front yard without getting swarmed and bitten by the ants. The ant/aphid combo was also killing all the aspen trees in the yard and many of the flowers. Anyhow, with that done, I blitz in the raised beds in a week and planted some rootbound pumpkin and squash that I had delayed planting. I also put in some beans to see if I could get something out of this summer.

The mule deer mowed down all of our tomatoes repeatedly (even though they were in pots on the porch), until we wrapped them in chicken wire. We have a few corn coming up. We got lots of apricots, one peach and are in the process of harvesting apples and plums.

Anyhow onto the photo dump:
Apricot gathering in early July:

It was a good, not great apricot year. We at many fresh, froze the rest for smoothies and ice cream. more apricot phots here

The raised bed.
Helper spawn helps clear and flatten

Scoping exercises

More betterer

Gopher guard, 1/4 hardware cloth

Second layer

Inspector Spawn making sure I did a good job

Fill with sand, dirt, compost etc...

Mule deer help trim everything

Rain and boots and family and cats help grow the squashes

Solitary peach of goodness

Apples are about ready

Plums are finally coming in

delicious yet a touch sour still

Apricots and the Spectral Child

The apricots are in full bloom again, Started 3/26



We usually have at least one hard freeze and a snowstorm when the apricot flowers are in bloom, small chance of snow on sunday, so we shall see if we can set the fruit before the flowers are destroyed.

The apricots flowers make nice cuttings and attract the spectral child, haunting the realm of the shutter lag.

A payment of sort

The mule deer left a nice antler in the yard for us. Sort of makes up for them taking out the aspen, eating all the fruit trees, the grapes, the tomatoes, pooping everywhere, etc. etc.

I have tolerated the mule deer as they are too big to do anything about short of shooting them or building a really tall expensive fence. I am no longer contemplating taking up bow hunting. For the time being.

A normal summer morning in our yard:

Be vewwy vewwy quiet

Seen, found, got

Seen in the yard:



Odd crustyness found on the trail



Pugsley bits about to be got:


From the Mellow Velo, photo from
joel

California Poppies, Finally

After a, no joke, 7 year ongoing effort to get a california poppy to flower in Los Alamos, NM. I win. The key for this one is that it was a seed that did NOT flower from a planting last year. I have tried planting in the late fall before unsuccessfully. But maybe this was close enough to the house to winter without getting too cold? Not sure. A woman down the block has them growing like weeds in her yard, she actually has to weed them out of other beds, why is she so blessed? Probably as she is right with the god. I am so not right with god, in my defense though, it said nothing about that on the back of the seed packet. I will further investigate as seasons progress. She also graciously will allow me to collect seeds from her known producers. We tried transplanting her unloved poppies to my yard, but california poppies resist transplanting and seem to even resist starting them indoors in compostable pots and then just plain old planting the whole pot in the ground.

So the new plan is to monitor the poppies planted this year to see if any succeed, and then to sow seeds in october or november this year.

They killed Kenny

Usually I would be blogging winter stuff right now, but it is so dry and (relatively) warm, I actually had to water some trees. We have no snow to speak of in Los Alamos thus far, so here is some sad old news...

My favorite tree planting, posthumously anointed Kenny, is an aspen I planted in the front yard. It went yellow this year and was growing slowly, yet steadily, into a tree, potentially offering shade in the hot summer afternoons. Alas the morning we left for New Zealand, I found it smashed asunder:



Neighbors saw sparring mule deer in the front the afternoon before. You bastards. You killed Kenny. I have since cut the remains down and added it to the kindling pile, hoping that some aspen suckers come up from the root.

I think I took this photo a mere handful of hours before the deer got the tree.

Thistles and Peas

Somehow I thought I had nettles growing my raspberry bed, so I let them go thinking I could eat some nettle soup next year.



I realized belatedly that they were not even remotely that. Next I hoped they were cardoons so I could eat the labor intensive blanched stems. But as they bloomed they really did not look cardoonish.


After some research I think they are some knapweed or starthistle. The foliage seems to be unlike most of the varieties I can find online, but it is pretty close. Turns out some of this species can stunt the growth of nearby plants, which is the last thing our poor stunted raspberries need.


I was going to let them grow anyway, but I remember that three years ago I not only let the sweet pea vines go to seed, but may have strewn them about a bit. The result is that they are thriving everywhere, including places that never get water. I pulled as many as I could find last year, but I still have more this year, I thought these were annuals? Maybe I am still being punished from seeds from three years back? As a non-fragrant variety with pea like pods that are inedible and seem to be able to outcompete the roses and raspberries, I really wish I had not let them go.
effin sweet pea vines everywhere


So in conclusion, I don't know what they were, but I kilt the hell out of em. I hope. I did save the seeding heads in a plastic bag in case I want them later. Seems like they are infested with larvae of some sort, little reddish wiggling thingies all over the bag.

Wink256 and the Une Van Suid-Afrika

Wink256 takes a short break from tormenting me.

It came from the sky

The good news is that none of the bikes were hurt.

A couple weeks back I was taking the morning off work to hang out with my brother. As we were plotting a bike ride down town to get some lunch, we looked up over the mountains and noted extremely ominous clouds closing in. We thought better of the ride and just as I was explaining to my brother how hard it had hailed the day before, we heard a mighty pthunk as a large hailstone hit the roof. We went out on the porch and watched as really big hailstones fell every few seconds.
sleepy brother holding initial hailstone


As the frequency and size of hailstones increased, I noticed a roar coming from the south, I thought it was wind, but I realized I was hearing the core of the hailstorm moving up the street toward the house. Crap. The storm got pretty intense, the videos here don't quite do it justice.
initial stages


toward the end




It was sort of amusing until Elena came running to say that the skylights had all broken and there was hail and broken skylight all over the kitchen. The post storm tally was 5 broken skylights, decent water damage in the kitchen floors below the skylight, my brothers rental car was decimated (he had the insurance), both of the vw's had dents on the rear third, cracked tail lights and broken rear wipers ($3000 in damage according to the insurance company), dented gutters.






The roof seems OK, no leaking, but it looks worse for the wear. The insurance adjuster for the house came by, but we are waiting for the results. It could have been a lot worse. We already had a contractor out to asses the roof/skylights and will replace the skylights soon with tempered glass ones as well as possibly replacing the roof. We will also likely get the wood floor redone in the kitchen as it is raised and starting to warp.



The yard was carnage. The whole house smelled like sage because of the shredding that the giant sage plants took out front. The fruit trees were shorn of most fruit and alot of leaves.


Tomatoes, peppers and pumpkin plants were reduced to bare stalks, as were the roses and raspberries.

Pumpkin plant, this had big flowers the day before


I spent some nervous time up on the roof covering the skylights while followup thunderstorms blew in. Thanks to neighbors and friends we were able to get enough tarps and plywood to cover it quickly.

Storms recede


Pretty much every house and RV skylight in the neighborhood had damage, lots of roofs were completely totaled. Many cars were totaled out due to hail damage and many car windshields were broken completely, especially on cars that have low angle windows like prius and other hondas.

The variety of hailstones that fell were pretty interesting,
initial morphology

Golf balls with baseball size agglomerations


Again, the upshot was that it was way more exciting than it needed to be, but it could have been worse. I guess this is a pretty regular occurrence in places of the country where I have never lived, but hail at this level is pretty new to me. The roof still works and all the bikes are OK.
more photos
The end.

Yearly Apricot Blossom Snow

This year it occurred on March 26-27, 6+ inches of snow accompanied by an overnight low of 15 degrees or so. Last year we got 4 apricots, two years ago we had a billion. Lets see what we have this year. It seems like the blooms are a bit early this year, but we will see, I think, for future reference the first blooms started on 3/22.



2008 snowy apricots on 4/10/2008


2007 snowy apricots on 4/13/2007, looks like blooming started on 3/20/2007

Short track XC ski action

We got something like 18 inches of snow in town in the last 36 hours as well as a bonus day and a half off of work. It was snowing heavily all day today so we hung out at the home most of the day. In between bouts of shoveling and walking the baby to her two month checkup, I set up a little short track XC ski course around the house.


There was a tiny climb, a chicane, a descent that dumped you into a chainlink fence and a million turns. All I needed was three more competitors to make it more fun. I did about 20 laps on the touring skis. more pics of the course

Alas, after the skiing was done, shoveled off the driveway and thus ruined the course. We have a bunch more snow predicted this week, so maybe the course will return! Failing that, there should be groomed skate skiing this weekend up here, unless we get alot more snow. There is already too much for the grooming machines to handle, so if you live in los alamos, get yer back country skis and get up the mountain and pack the trails down a bit...

The view from the living room

Taken a few weeks back.


In case you can not make out the critter:



I think it is one of Wink256 larger horned relatives.

Kittycorner

Due to impending major additions to the household, we kicked the cats out of the third bedroom and converted a closet to a cat loft/litter cave. With lights and fan. I did the design, but am pretty swamped, so we were glad to find a local handyman to do the demolition and rebuild. He also hung a door so we can put the kitties away at night in the large carport converted into a laundry room/mudroom/catroom/studio.

More or less what the closet looked like before, this is the one next to the one we converted


The plans!


Finished closet, see switches for light and fan in the bottom right


Feedthroughs to facilitate cat movement


Wink 256 and Deeeeee model the finished catty corner


more cat cave pics