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Has Achieved Nirvana |
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Minor Deity |
This is my garden image..well not mine, but a city school..on the day school let out..I am mulching the walkways when I have time..I can manage about and hour or so of wood chips then some watering, hung hooks in the shed..the produce in the beds behind the herb bed, will be distributed in food CSA's to school families. My garden is pretty and ornamental..this one is more heartfelt.  
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
Turns out there are at least two youngsters! They huddle in the grass and don't move until you're almost on top of them. Mr wtg and Raffi were out early this morning and the babies took off as man and dog approached. Apparently Raffi jumped almost vertically in an attempt to catch them. Guess he has some kind of bird dog in him....
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| knitterati Beatification Candidate  |
Are you taking pictures with your phone camera? If you tap what you’re focusing on (bird), it will adjust exposure for that subject. May help with your birdie being washed out by sunlight.
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Minor Deity |
Our plants are doing OK, but we have a new backyard resident. Been hanging around several days. He's just a little guy. 
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
Thanks, AM. I'm no photographer or photoshopper, so anything that can help me take a halfway decent snapshot is a good thing. My phone is super super cheapo, so I'll have to see if it has that functionality. But at least I know it's a possibility.
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
I rescued this bulb from my neighbor's garage. It unexpectedly shot up a bud a couple of weeks ago and now....  I broke all the rules for getting an amaryllis to rebloom. Go figure.
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
The currant bush has a bumper crop of berries this year.  My trusty assistant:  Using Grandma's old aluminum bowl and Mom's old aluminum colander for berry picking:  I got rid of my canning supplies a few years ago so had to go out and buy some new jars, a jar lifter, and a funnel. The next step of the project commences later today or tomorrow....
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Minor Deity |
I missed this a couple of weeks ago. Wow, wtg, your garden looks amazing!!! Everything's so neat and elegant and tasty-looking! I overplanted, as I always do, so my beds are overflowing with jungly plant life. Everything produces less than it would have if I hadn't overdone it, but the lower yield kinda works for me. I get a little bit of everything, but I don't get buried in anything. Right now, the tomatoes and cucumbers are coming in and I'll pick my first eggplants in a day or two. I've had a couple of trombocino squash so far. The okra looks iffy and I don't think I planted enough field peas because I'd already planted too many other things, but I may be surprised on both counts. I think the bitter melon is going to start making soon. The lettuce was great until it got too hot for it. The radishes are done and the carrots are almost done. The flowers are loving all the rain we had, as well. It's all good. SK, I was playing a little bit more than I've played in a long time, but I took a break this week because the Quirtlets were visiting and we wanted to spend time with them. They're both on the plane, so I'm hoping I get back to semi-regular playing. I'm working on a Chopin nocturne, and I'm thinking about picking up a Bach prelude and fugue. Gardens and pianos are soothing to the mind. 
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| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity  |
Lovely!
I agree!! I love Bach but I have never tackled anything really difficult by him. I'm working on a piece by a Japanese composer that starts out very quiet and then gets very dramatic with a section where the bass goes thundering down... I love playing it!! I'm still on my sightreading kick, which includes working (playing) through every piece in the Music for Millions vol. 17 book, as well as playing through score books I have on the shelf that I've never played. This has been super fun and I love discovering new pieces that are surprising or charming! I also decided I need to make my understanding of chords more explicit, so I'm slowly playing through some Hal Leonard books that I got ages and never worked on before. Oh, and I was delighted to discover that I can sightread through Gymnopedie and (mostly) through Reverie by Debussy! 
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| Minor Deity |
We have similar tastes. I love Gymnopedie and Reverie, and I love it when the bass comes thundering down. I also really need to put some effort into chord theory, but I'm feeling really lazy right now...this year...this decade...all the decades.... 
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
The monsoon came. It has been very dry. Wilfire smoke never got too bad here. The rains will help avoid a wildfire season like last year, which was horrendous. Tucson is also enjoying rain. The lack of a monsoon last summer made Tucson hard to bear. Quietly celebrating the rains.
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
I ended up with about 6 pounds of currants from the one bush. We used to make currant jelly years ago. My mom's best friend used to prepare hers using the recipe in the Sure-Jell box of pectin, so that's what we always followed. This year I looked up a bunch of recipes online and discovered that red currants have plenty of natural pectin and don't need Sure-Jell. And that they don't have to be stemmed before being cooked. The stems just come out when you put the cooked fruit through the food mill. I decided to try about 3 pounds worth of berries and experiment with a new recipe. Jelled nicely but Mr wtg and I both thought the finished product was a little sweeter than we like, so I'll try reducing the sugar next time. I washed the remaining berries and froze them. I figure I'll cook them in a couple of months after we go through some of the jars of jam I put up today. I'm going to look for black currant bushes to plant next spring. They're even better than the red ones...
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
Big changes in my yard! I've posted about this big Russian olive tree in the past. 5 trunks - one of the largest olives I've ever seen. Years ago it stopped producing (no loss - it made a mess) and then it started dying trunk by trunk. When it started dropping big limbs I knew it had to go. Turns out it died from OQD - "Olive Quick Decline" - a bacteria spread by the glass-winged sharpshooter. The arborist told me was going to kill every olive tree in the county but so far it seems to have killed only mine.   I finally sold the white company truck, slow to sell at at 350K miles but a solid truck nonetheless. A tree company bought it (5 stars on Yelp!) and we worked out a partial swap for services.  While they were there I had them trim an enormous crepe myrtle (supposed to be a dwarf - it isn't) and two Xylosma bushes that decided they would be Xylosma trees.  Fun to watch, and you could not pay me enough to to their job.  Here's the crepe myrtle about halfway through: 
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
The change in the landscape is pretty dramatic. I decided not to have the olive stump ground out due to cost. I kind of like how it looks, but I had no idea it would be as big as it is.   I spent Monday fixing some of the damage caused by trampling things and plugging in new grass where it had died from crepe myrtle shade.  I also cleaned up the side patio. The little area with the rocks and the wooden screen is next up for renovation. I've never been able to get much to grow there.  My crew did a nice job of rebuilding the patio cover while we were on lockdown: 
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