Re: [gardeners] State of the list, and other things
Ron Hay (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Sun, 21 Nov 1999 09:59:07 -0800
Good morning, George!
First of all, let me thank you for your "CARE" package which arrived Friday.
I will look forward to planting the cinnamon vine, as soon as it warms up a
bit, as this is our coolest part of the year. I fully expect a freeze within
the next ten days, as this morning we had a cold Santa Ana, with Bearss
"lime bombs" strewn all over at the base of our tree.
We picked the pomagranates and the fuyu persimmons this week, and look
forward to having them as part of our Thanksgiving Day feast.
The birds of paradise and Mexican sage continue to amaze us as to their
profusion of blooms. What a mixture the tangernine and cobalt of the "birds"
make, in concert with the vibrant purple of the sage.
The serrano chiles continue to cranke 'em out, and I will probably pick
another 25 or 30 this afternoon. The pole beans are setting blossoms; the
broccoli continue to grow, and the artichokes (!) are absolutely burgeoning,
in preparation for blooming in February or March, having increased in number
from the original two to about 6 plants by now.
The passion fruit, of which we have harvested about 30 by now, are
continuing to turn purple, prior to falling off the vine as "bombs" in the
Santa Anas.
The basil has scattered seeds all over the ground, while continuing to
delight us with a fresh supply of leaves every time we require basil for
some wonderful tomatoey dish.
The callas! They are now almost 4' tall, and we fully expect blooms within
the week.
We must take steps to protect our newest "baby, " our Beaumontia macadamia
nut tree on our front lawn. We are thinking of draping a big ol garbage bag
over it at the first sign of a freeze, and place jugs of warm water under
it. I am told that this will be necessary the first year, as it does not
have sufficient root structure to enable it to withstand temps of 28
degrees, which it typically gets down to on the night of the freeze, of
which I hope we only have one or two. But this year, with La Nina holding
sway, who knows?!
Meanwhile I must get back to my Danish red cabbage with vinegar and currant
jelly, which I am making ahead of time, so it can gather oomph, before we
serve it with our roast pork this evening.
I wish one and all a lovely warm Sunday, with sumbeams on your shoulders:)
Ron
George Shirley wrote:
> Good morning Gardeners! Thought you might be interested in a few
> statistics about our list. As of this morning we have 125 members in 5
> countries, the majority in the U.S. and Canada. Our sysop has
> successfully filtered all of the spam out. Unfortunately I, as list
> owner, get to see it all as it bounces to me. Fortunately it is easy to
> delete. <VBG> We average about 30 spam messages a day to the list. Also
> we get several "bounced" messages of the administrative type, including
> messages from those who have misplaced or forgotten their instructions
> for the list and messages from those who have heard about us but really
> don't know how to subscribe. I try to handle those folks in an
> expeditious way but am not always successful. Six of the original eight
> subscribers are still members so we do have some longevity here.
>
> As to gardening, it is turrible dry around here as the old farmer said.
> According to last nights weather person we are 16.21 inches behind on
> rain for this time of year. The alligators are carrying canteens as they
> search for mud holes. Duck hunters are telling tales of low water in the
> marshes and swamps. The farmers are definitely hurting and there will
> probably be less of them in 2000 then there are today.
>
> Our garden continues to grow because we are able to provide ground water
> to the plants. We are gobbling up radishes on a daily basis now and
> eating the radish greens as a side dish at dinner. The beans and peas
> have pretty much had it and the broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, etc. are
> still a bit away from bearing. Luckily there's plenty of lettuce so we
> don't lack for salads. The chiles, peppers to us southeners, are still
> bearing mightily and I have started a second crock of pepper sauce. The
> Ponderosa lemons are ripening and we've already harvested about a dozen
> with at least twice that many to go yet. Looks like Thanksgiving will
> include a couple of lemon pies. The kumquats are ripening but the trees
> are small enough that we just eat them as they ripen. Miss Sleepy Dawg
> has evidently seen us do that and figured they must be good as we caught
> her picking one of her own yesterday. She didn't much like it so we hope
> this won't become a normal thing. She does like raspberries and
> blackberries so picks the ones close to the ground. She's resting in
> "her" sunbeam on the family room floor at the moment. Pretty tired
> little pup since she was up most of the night caring for Miz Anne, who
> has the sniffles. Sleepy gets worried when one of us isn't 100 percent
> and spends a lot of time laying close to the sick person so as to
> available for petting, scratching, rubbing of bellies, and other things
> that humans do for dogs when the humans are feeling poorly. The perfect
> therapy dog there.
>
> We're preparing for Thanksgiving already as our daughter and her three
> teenagers are coming on Wednesday to stay the weekend. This means the
> cooking of copious amounts of food to keep the kids from chewing the
> carpet, etc to assuage hunger pains. The two boys are both over six feet
> tall now and the "little" girl, who just turned 13 on the 10th of the
> month, is a little over 5 foot, eight inches tall herself. I don't know
> how our daughter feeds them on a school teachers salary. Luckily they're
> willing to help with the cooking and cleanup. Personally I think it's a
> ploy on their part to get access to any leftovers.
>
> Better go now and get on with the program, gotta start baking bread
> early for the ravening horde. Life is good.
>
> George