Garden update.

First produce of the season. H would be proud.


Overview.


Addition of strawberries on the back/left. Front left = radishes, spinach next (2 squares), lettuce (2 squares), carrots (front row), beets (2nd row). The 4 open squares in the back are going to be hollyhocks because that spot is almost impossible to get to for harvesting. The strawberries are perennials so those and the hollyhocks should come back every year if I cover the bed to keep it warm over the winter.


14 Assorted tomatoes (hybrids, sweet 100s, some heirloom varieties, romas, and sandwich sized), butternut squash and acorn squash in column 3 - back and 2nd rows, jalapeños, habanero, and another pepper in upper right corner.


Finally, the butterfly/hummingbird garden with the blown glass feeder (a going away gift from my former co-workers).

I have radishes!


And a nesting robin!

Buzzards

Actually turkey vultures. Here are some pictures from a rainy morning (May 15) about 10:00 AM of the roost of turkey vultures along West Road in Los Alamos. This road traverses Los Alamos Canyon just west of the bridge and passes the skating rink in the bottom of the canyon. Just uphill of the skating rink on the south side is the vulture's roost. Usually they have all left by 7:30 AM or so and return at dusk. This morning was cold with rain mixed at times with snow, so everybody was staying home. These birds have a 6-foot wingspan. It is fun to watch them ride the thermals up in the morning, hardly flapping at all, and then peel off one at a time at about 50 mph to sniff out lunch. They are one of the few birds with a sharp sense of smell. We were fairly far away for these pictures and even with 3X zoom these views are just a small piece of the full-size pictures.

Trail work from May 1 to May 3

Here are some before and after pictures from work on a 90-foot-long section of the Pueblo Canyon trail. The first two show what was done in one day. The next one is after two more days. I took out the the small tree that the Pulaski is leaning on in the first view. The large rock in the distance in the final view had been above the trail and in the way so I moved it to a hole I dug to catch it below the trail.

Downed Tree on Walnut Canyon Trail

While walking along the Pueblo trail, you can see part of the trail I built on the other side of the canyon, in 2006 and 2007. There is a tree lying across the Walnut Canyon Trail. The downed tree is on the left third of the picture.

Also in this picture there is a log near the upper right parallel to the trail where Mary and I sometimes have a picnic lunch. My friend Harunori cut off the large tree near the middle of the picture. We rolled the end over to help support the downhill side of the trail.




After cutting a few remaining strands of root, I rolled the downed tree off the trail and just downhill of the spot, but it seems to be hidden by another cluster of trees. The soil is so bone dry and powdery that the wind pulled this live 8-inch-diameter, 20-foot-tall pine up by its roots.

Yard work.

I've been working on a path from the house to the garage for a couple years now. This spring I decided to work it into my garden (visually) so here is my progress.

This first picture is last summer. The dogs hadn't taken to digging right along the concrete yet.


Here is my progress this spring. The dogs decided eating dirt was a fun past-time so they decided to start digging to China along the concrete slab. Quite an unsightly pain.



In order to nip the digging in the bud, we poured a bag of concrete mix in with the dirt, stirred it up, wet it, stomped on it, and finished off the area with mulch. Hopefully jerks #1 and #2 will leave the area alone now! I need one more bag of mulch to finish off the far end.

Trail work

Here is a section of the Pueblo Canyon trail I am working on. On the left is a "before" shot showing how steep and narrow the existing trail is. On the right is the "after" shot taken from about the same place.