Purple Pupa

I found this yesterday after having accidentally knocked it loose with the hose from its webbed hiding spot in a corner against the house.  It is really purple, the exact same dusty-reddish-purple color that a wine grape gets right before it is fully ripe.  I have looked at pages and pages of pupa photos online, but can't figure out what it is!  There are red ones, green ones, black ones, brown ones, even some with bright blue spots... but no purple?  There is a solution to this, and the solution is putting it in a mason jar (with air flow, of course), to see what it turns into.  My guess is a moth or giant beetle... it looks very much like moth pupae online, but also very much like the pupae that the gecko's mealworms morph into (except twice as large, and PURPLE).

It is an inch long, and I propped it up on the curve of a teacup plate so that you could see the underside.

A side view.

Here you can see the pores on each of the "tail" segments.

Can anyone identify this before it hatches?  I am totally curious.

Ladybug hides unsuccessfully

Salvia greggii: otherwise known as Autumn Sage, Wild Thing

I showed the Stinkyplant to my coworker, and she thought it was a type of mint because its stem is square and the leaves are opposite of each other.  She is a fount of wisdom, and within 15 minutes she sent me this website:
http://www.easybloom.com/plantlibrary/plant/autumn-sage-6
Aha!  Stinkyplant is really Autumn Sage!!  It does look very similar to the Wild Thing cultivar, a red-pink vibrant flower.  It is a bush sage, which is a salvia, which is a mint, so both coworker and mother-in-law were correct.

Both my coworkers thought the scent of the plant was very tasty and minty, even when crushed.  Blergh!  My wise coworker said that people who grew up near the ocean or foothills/mountains (as my husband and I did) aren't used to the volatile oils of valley plants and interpret them as offensive.  Makes sense... vastly unfamiliar plants should be off-putting so that we don't taste them when we don't know if they're edible.  It's true, to me a lot of native valley herbs have that underlying scent to them (just never as strong as this one).  She is taking home my samples to see if she can root them for her garden's hummingbirds, but I will also try to make her a larger potted plant.  It was very difficult to get the autumn sage separated at the root level, but hopefully its amazing vigor allows it to flourish in the pot.

Here is a link which breaks down sages into different categories... my Salvia greggii is an "aromatic sage."
http://www.iamshaman.com/salvia/salvia-sage.htm
Something strange has happened to my perception of the plant.  Now that I know it's used as a tea/gargle for throat ailments (use leaves only), a flavoring for heavy meat/bean stews, and that it is a mint, I can smell the mintiness of the plant.  It is no longer offensive to my nose... as long as it doesn't get crushed.  I'm open-minded... perhaps with this revelation I can come to love the plant more.  And maybe one day I will get brave enough to try some tea.

Up to Date

Wow, I am all caught up with the posts!  I'm amazed that it took a few weeks to accomplish.  Thank you for sticking with me through these technical difficulties.  <3

If you want to start reading from the beginning of the late posts, here is the first post from our return from vacation.  It ended up turning into a longer internet-vacation than I was expecting, and I'm very happy to be back on schedule.
Back Home

Here is a bonus photo!

 

The first jalapeno says hello

<---  Zen Frog has a little something to say too.  *blush*

Stinky Plant

There is a plant which is the best yet the worst plant in the garden.  Between the front & back yard, there are 5 large bushes of it.  It is herbaceous, with a woody stem on the old growth.

Lovely... but beyond gross!

Pros:
- Hummingbirds LOVE LOVE LOVE this plant.  Its bright red-pink flowers attract them like nothing else, and they are constantly in the backyard, nearly ignoring the hummingbird feeder.
- Let's not forget that bees & bumblebees (and carpenter bees in the front yard) love it just as much... and with honeybees in decline, it's considered a good deed to keep them happy.
- It is quite lovely, with thick fresh green foliage and a plethora of flowers.
- Drought-resistant!
- Growth is astounding, so cutting it back once a month (or more!) is necessary to keep it from going crazy.  Never have I encountered such a vigorous plant.  Cutting it so frequently has literally made a constant supply of fresh flowers since late winter.

Cons:
- It has the most offensive smell of any plant I have ever smelled, hence the nickname Stinkyplant.  My husband agrees!  The smell isn't so bad when you're next to the plant, but if your clothes rub it the scent becomes overpowering.  I can't continue to wear contaminated clothing, and being stuck in the limited air space of a car with contaminated clothes is pretty horrific. 
- Growth is astounding.  No matter how much I cut it back, it is always encroaching into the places where we need to walk, so it is easy to brush up against it.  I have measured 6" of growth in a week after a chopping.  I would kill this thing if it was allowed (we're renting) and if the wildlife didn't love it so much.

I wish every plant grew as easily as this one.

My mother-in-law has suggested that it is a type of salvia, but I cannot find anything on it.  I'll bring it in to work next time to see if either of my coworkers might know what it is.

Do you know?

First Tomato

Feeding the cat

I have been slowly trying to win Grumpy Cat's affections with tuna over the past month.  It is working!  He approached me of its own free will this morning, and let me pet him for almost 5 seconds, so he's been rewarded with tuna. Alternatively, I have become predictable and have been rewarded with minor petting privileges for bringing the tuna. BWAHAHAHAHA!

Grumpy Cat prefers Sea Chicken

It was pretty cute... I left the door open as I went to get the tuna, and when I turned around he was patiently waiting inside the house. When I noticed, he went "OH #@%$!" and became airborne in a mad dash outside to patiently wait.  Initially Grumpy Cat hadn't come over for tuna this morning, he'd come over to stare obsessively at the bird feeder. I didn't think about the bird feeder being also doubling a cat feeder... hmmm. After a full belly, he's not so interested in birds anymore though.  Later we napped under the cool shady wisteria-covered porch together (well, within 3 feet of each other)... it was pretty nice, and I ended up with leaves in my hair yet again.  :)

Full belly = Less-Grumpy Cat

Soon... soon I will have a feline minion!  Maybe he'll help me keep tabs on Scrub Jay.

Rogue Jay

I have been saddened that the apple tree, heavy with fruit, has decided that it is TOO heavy with fruit. It's expected that they'll naturally prune themselves if you don't prune them (it has been recommended that I trim the bounty to just two apples per cluster, but I didn't), especially if the tree is under-watered. And so, I have been watering the drip line (the circle around the edge of the tree branches, which is where the most absorbent parts of the roots are), in hopes that it will stem the fall.

All of the apples which have fallen thus far.

And then, Scrub Jay visited while I was outside by the bird feeder. He cawed his typical greeting, which often means “it's 6am on a weekend and the bird feeder is empty, I will do this until you wake up and feed me!” He looked at me, the bird empty feeder, me, the empty bird feeder, and then flew to the apple tree. He looked back to be sure that I was watching, and with two swift pecks he violently “liberated” an apple from the branch, and it plunked loudly to the ground. He looked back at me and tilted his head in a “there's more where that came from” and flew away.

I haven't been keeping up with the demands placed on the bird feeder. I am being punished by the bird. What a wise bird.

>.<

Pumpkin Flower: Galeux d'Eysines

Gourdy Gourdy!

I have such fond memories of the year we made a food garden when I was still living at home.  We put it on a drip system, encircled the entire thing with bird netting, and neglected it for months.  Finally we went to harvest, and the zucchinis were a foot and a half long, and 4 inches wide!  Yes, they were woody and flavorless, but they were great for scooping out and filling with a zucchini-meatloaf combination.  And most of all, those monster zucchini were fantastic for playing with.

Zucchini are also my favorite "daily" vegetable... grilled, baked, stir-fried, in casseroles, in soup, in omelets, even cooked in french fry shapes for eating with hamburgers.  It's hard for me to imagine getting sick of them.  I've been told that 2 zucchini plants will have you sick of them because they're so productive, so I planted 4 originally.  Now there is just one left that has survived the battle with the slugs and earwigs, but it is getting pretty large.  There are a ton of flower buds on it, so I'm hoping for some zucchini soon!  I have planted more in hopes that it's not too late in the season... but thus far nothing else is coming up.

There's definitely room for at least 2 more!

Pumpkins were my husband's garden request, and so I planted 2 or 3 Galeux d'Eysines in a mound in the only real spot left in the garden.  I also made it on the opposite side of the garden in hopes that I wouldn't end up with zucchini-pumpkin hybrids (although that would still be cool... and maybe edible) since our backyard is just brimming with hyperactive pollenators.

 Before:  waiting for pumpkin seedlings.

Once they started having flowers, I read that the first few flowers are male and the rest female, and that they will not make pumpkins unless correctly pollenated.  I panicked... there were only 2 surviving plants, and they were both on the same schedule so they wouldn't be able to pollenate each other!  I planted several more, and ended up with 5 plants that appear to be all about the same age.  Hopefully there is enough variation that pollenation will occur so that we can have lots o' pumpkins this halloween!  They are making some really gorgeous vines which seem to wilt slightly around noon but come back completely to crisp fullness.

After:  Explosion of vines, and lots of possibilities.  *crosses fingers*

Do you have any gourds in your garden, or any gourd-growing tips?

Wow, what a heat wave!

After all this rain I can tell it's summer finally... the sun is beginning to exert its dangerous forces on my parched little garden.  Two of my maples were burned, and one of them only had 3 leaves left.  I moved them to under the edge of the wisteria-covered porch where it's shadier and less windy, and have been a bit more attentive to watering.  I was pretty worried, but they're bouncing back.

The littlest maple made lots of buds right away!  It probably helped that I added some fish fertilizer.

The peas had browned quite a bit while I was away on vacation, and I was waiting to see if the hints of green meant life was still there... but they were fully dead within a week.  It's just too hot, and peas are a cold-weather plant.  Somehow this year I ended up with hardly any peas, maybe 30 out of 10 plants, but the vines were incredibly vigorous and had actually reached the top of the trellis, leaned over, and started to twine around the apple tree.  Last year with the same amount of plants in the same size pot, I was getting 5-8 peas a day for weeks, and the plants only got 2/3rds of the way up the same trellis.  The changed location is definitely making me change the way I've container-gardened in the past.

Though the peas are gone, the green beans are just getting started!

After living in the bay area for so many years, I'm not used to temperatures up in the 90's.  But it does feel good having more blatant extremes of weather, it makes me more aware of the seasons and time's progress.  And the heat of the season is made all the more enjoyable because we have air conditioning now!

Store-bought Jalapeno

Aaaaaalmost Back!

Hello all,

Yes, I've been a bit, um, less than punctual in getting up several posts.  All of the posts are ready aside from the addition of photos, so you'll be getting a veritable avalanche of new posts very soon!

- Kendra, your devoted yet ludicrously tardy scribe

Getting Medieval

So... the seedlings in the raised beds aren't doing so great.  My nemesis, Grumpy Cat, seems to think that the raised beds are his playground, his bathroom, his area of destruction.  I can't blame him, since I made the soil perfectly friable (fluffy) and even and wonderful... who wouldn't want to dig up everything and bury little surprises?

This weekend I lost patience, and decided to get medieval with the cat.
Plan #1:  Cayenne pepper sprinkled around on the soil.  Would not feel good in the nose of a kitty/squirrel/raccoon/bird, or whatever thinks it's fun to destroy my hopes and dreams of a fruitful garden.
Plan #2:  Bamboo stakes planted halfway in the ground at various angles around the plants, so as to make it very difficult for an animal to sit on the raised beds.  No, I didn't put the heads of anything on the stakes ala Vlad the Impaler.  I may have thought about it though. 
Plan #3:  Giving up on some seedlings and purchasing larger plants at Home Depot.  I ended up getting a regular basil, cinnamon basil, 2 more tomatoes, 2 lemon cucumbers, 2 habaneros, and a jalapeno.  While I feel this is a mini-defeat because I was not able to grow my own plants from seed (and it's too late in the season to try yet again), in the end I will win the largest battle of all:  actually having produce to eat.

The new lemon cucumbers look a little sad... but not as sad as the old lemon cucumbers!

Yes, Grumpy Cat, I want to be your friend.  But I will not stand for this behavior, not when my swiss chard is at stake!  Here's to a fruitful garden, free of pests of all kinds...
*crosses fingers*

Mantis Update

There are only a few mantises left in the wine barrel. They've adopted a new behavior... whenever something rustles the herbs, they make an instant leap off of whatever branch they're on. I'm sure this leaping activity has had an effect on their immediate dispersal into the garden.

The few who have remained on the herbs seem to be rather enjoying themselves...

This baby mantis has caught a baby grasshopper for breakfast.

I watched one on the pathway, and it started to cross a 7-inch paving stone... it began skittering across in a panic, and died by the time it reached the other side. I was more than a little horrified that the ground was so hot that it was killing the little fellas, so I ended up misting water over all the surfaces to cool the garden down in the heat of the day.

I watched another one who was in the shade next to a trail of ants... it really, REALLY wanted to grab an ant, but it overshot each predatory lunge by about 200%. It was pretty hilarious, and it reminded me of Bambi sliding around on a frozen pond on its newborn gangly legs.