Busy Afternoon ....

We had some overcast today so I got out and put the shadecloth over the herbs; not the greatest construction in the world but I will be refining it over the next few weeks. I think I should have moved the plants further away from that block wall given how hot the wall can get. I actually have plenty more shade cloth if I want to make aome other arrangement.

The shadecloth is fastened to the wall and fastened temporarily on some plants stakes or poles in the front and side. that given me room to pull the canopy away and water easily. Anyway, that was enough for today.






A peek underneath ....

peace, shamba

Sunday Cooking ...

My goal in cooking is to have food for 1-3 days. Of course, this involves leftovers; leftovers that can taste good cold or re heated. The cold food will sound better and better in the next week or so.

Today it’s a turkey loaf in the Sun oven and a veggie dish in the Tulsi oven. They could both be stacked in the Sun oven but the potato dish was an afterthought so I just put it in the Tulsi oven. The potato dish is just, sweet potato and red potato chopped medium fine, a little salt, pepper, fresh parsley and dried dill. I usually add some olive oil if I’m roasting them in the electric oven but this time I'm doing without the oil.

Anyway that’s enough food for at least 2-3 days with some fruit or salad greens with it or as snacks. We got some tasty apricots with the CSA stuff last week.

Next is putting up shade screen over the container herbs tomorrow. I feel like there's a race on to do thing before the end of this week! Temps will increase a lot this week, we’ll be at 105 by the end of this week; 110 over next weekend. We’ve had a good May but the heat comes some time.

peace, shamba

Easter Monday ...

Another beautiful day in the high 70s. :)

Transplanted into better and larger pots: Italian parsley, Lemon thyme, French thyme, Greek oregano, and cilantro.

Still out in the front of the house: Sweet basil, 2 bronze fennel plants, and chives.

Tomorrow, I’m doing the 3 cat nip plants into bigger containers and they’ll be out front for the cats to use/play with. The two tortiseshell females, Tortie and Chloe, particularly like these plants.

Hung up my two clay sun faces on the patio wall facing the bedrooms. They look better over the plants and I get to see them this way when I go by the patio doors. I left the other face on the wall facing the plants.

Monday morning, lots of smaller earthquakes today south of the Imperial Valley/Salton Sea area between Baja and mainland Mexico, The reason is the Sunday quake in Baja California (near Mexicali) which rated a 7.2 on the Richter scale. K. called me from San Diego yesterday afternoon to tell me about the quake they felt quite a bit in La Jolla. He said the buildings swayed a little (they live on the 3rd floor of 5 floors) and the pool water sloshed out of the pool itself. He’s never been in a quake in La Jolla. He lived in Palo Alto when the big quake hit in the Bay Area in 1989.

He was the quake happened only about 100 miles from Yuma and so that’s why Yuma felt it so much. A lot of people in Phoenix also reported feeling the quake, I didn’t but I was asleep! This is the first time I can remember so many people feeling and earthquake in Phoenix that came from the California or the Mexico border area.

Lots of home videos from Phoenix and Yuma, that show water sloshing around inn pools and over flowing the sides of the pools because of the quake.

I hope it doesn’t happen again very soon.

Peace, shamba

September 21 Last Day of Summer

This is the Tulsi with the shadow of the old bush. The bricks that the oven sits on is the best general place to cook on the back patio but I have two small tables I also use to set the ovens on when I need to use it someplace else.

This is the west corner where the dead pyracantha was removed. The container of parsley, basil and oregano sits there right now but I don't leave it there because the sun is still too hot for it there. I wanted it in the photo though. and this is the Sun Oven I was cooking with that day. Also, you can see the corner of the red Tulsi oven in the right side of the picture. This is the sun mid morning to early afternoon in late September.

This is shot of Global Sun oven in the east corner of the patio. It is set up for late afternoon sun cooking 4-5:30. I will be losing this 5:30 sun in the next month. I'll have to cook in the front of the house as all direct sunlight is gone from the patio from November to early April.

Cheers,

Shamba

September 15-18th

Our kind landscaper came and took out my last and very old dead pyracantha bush. It was . old enough and brittle enough I could have broken it’s branches off one by one like I did with the other one, but he made short work of taking it out by using one of his saws. Now I have a whole empty corner of the patio to do something with. I’m thinking containers with some kind of plantings in them. I have some cuttings of plants one of my neighbors has and she’s got a great container garden in her front window area. Maybe I’ll check into a climbing plant of some kind to see if it could cover up part of the wall to keep it cooler. Cats’ claw always works. I’ll think about it.

Went to Home Depot today to look at a variety of things I’m always thinking about doing something about: a new front door that would be more efficient that the old door I have; look at lighting fixture for the kitchen or globes/bulb covers to replace the ones that I have broken; maybe plants.

So, for once I found some globes I like: I’m going back to get the globes later today. I did and they look so much nicer than only 3 globes on a 5 light fixture and only light bulbs in the places where the globes were broken off.

And, I got a container pot of basil, oregano and parsley. They will be fine in the container they’re in for a few weeks then I want to transplant them to larger ones. They smell wonderful.

This is all to reward myself after the struggle to get a signature guarantee from the Cu or the BofA so I can sell the last stock transfer for my mom’s estate account. The little BofA branch came through for me again! They didn’t’ fuss about whether or not they could do the signature since I am a trustee of the estate, they just did it for me! Something about the differences between CUs and banks I’m sure. Anyway, that done!

DJA still going up but hasn’t broken 10,000 yet. What holds it up for heavens sake??
Shamba

June 18th Patio Improvements Finished!

Okay, rice and greeen bean came out very well after one hour and 15 minutes in midday sun in June. it's gong to be 115 today but it's not quite that hot midday. anyway rice just needs less water and more time in oven than it got yesterday afternoon. I could smell the broccoli as I went outside to check on the oven! Picture of oven is above. A success!

New gate and new door to outside shed and painting on the wood on the backside of the house is done! Picture above of the two together.

There are more things to go but at least the list is halved from what it was almost a year ago.
There is one rather small thing that needs to be done but S. will come back next week and fix it and then paint it. It looks so nice, now I have to clean up the rest of it and see what I can do to make it a place you really want to go out and spend time in—of course that might wait until it’s cooler.

I’ve left the small wasps nest alone that’s in the dead pyrancantha next to the gate. It is a very small nest and they don’t bother me or the cats or anyone so I think I’ll leave it alone. I think wasps are pollinators—I’ll trim the dead bush back a little from the gate and leave the part next to the back wall where the nest is alone. The wasps have been there a couple of years and I’m not anxious to do away with them or their nest.

Cheers,

shamba