Where are they?

Hmm. Haven't seen a squirrel in days. Where are they? On the other hand, there is suddenly a lot of gopher action. Gophers don't like to coexist with other animals (squirrels, rabbits) so maybe the squirrels are gone?

More worrisome than the gopher activity are the bunny sightings. I don't think they've established residence on our ranch yet but I see them coming over from the nursery next door so it may just be a matter of time. A rabbit infestation doesn't sound very nice though the little cottontails are so cute.

Gangsta Squirrel Ghetto

Munched up leaves

There's an army of worms, millions strong, munching their way through dozens of giant oaks. You can hear them chewing, as well as their poop dropping like light rain on leaves. You can't stand under an oak too long or you'll be covered in worms. We have to take our clothes off before we enter the house.

I wasted a lot of water blasting them off our house before our nursery man next door tells us there's nothing we can do and it doesn't affect the oaks. "All you can do is let them do through their cycle."

Big Dog's been shoving smoke bombs into squirrel holes but they only have a temporary effect. New squirrels quickly find the old holes and move right in. Shiftless squatters!

Maybe our ranch is Gansta Squirrel Ghetto now. They're tough. They don't mind a few decomposing bodies at all.

"What's that nasty stench, man?"

"Oh, that's just Henry, my brother who died in the last bombing."

One of the gangstas diving into his hole.

You Can't Hurry Love

So sang The Supremes, but you can say the same thing about Nature.

I bought a sad looking tuberose bulb back in 2010, potted it and babied it. Absolutely nothing happened for the longest time. No leaves, no nothing.

"That's what I get for being so cheap," I thought. I had miserable results with seedlings I had bought at Home Depot that year. Sure, they were cheap, but when they all die out in a few weeks, it becomes Quite Expensive. I was reminded of Red Adair's famous statement "If you think a pro is expensive, wait til you hire an amateur" and henceforth decided that sometimes it is worth it to pay a little more.

Then, lo and behold! The tuberose grew leaves and finally bloomed last summer, more than 2 years after I had planted that bulb. But, ahh, that heady perfume! It was Battle of the Fragrances inside our greenhouse between the tuberose and the plumeria. I was happy I hadn't given up on my baby, even when it looked Very Dead.

And now I am singing the Motown classic again because...

My first asparagus spear has made its debut!

I planted the first asparagus seeds in early 2011, so I guess they are right on schedule. Wonder how many spears I will ultimately see this year? Guess I will "just have to wait." Love (and asparagus) don't come easy...it's a game of give and take...you can't hurry love...no, you just have to wait...trust, give it time, no matter how long it takes....

Doin' the Crocodile Rock

Okay, so it's buggy. My legs are pockmarked from weeks of mosquito bites. (No, I don't like pesticides and cannot stand putting them on my skin. And my citronella oil does not seem to be very effective.) Am I a weirdo for thinking that this is a small price to pay for fireflies at night?

In the Big Town -- as we've been calling our former home base (a small but growing fishing village/winter hangout for norteamericanos) -- they spray the canals and swampy areas to eliminate mozzies, but here, the mangrove swamp is a protected habitat for crocs and herons and bright red tree crabs.

These crocs look like something out of Jurassic Park.

Hello daaaaahling...

 Sometimes they break through the chainlink fence and come out onto the beach.

Never underestimate the speed at which a croc can move!

Pet owners, beware!

And when they are feeling particularly aggressive, they make the most amazing sound.

"I thought there was a weedwacker being used somewhere!" I marveled.

"You are so removed from nature," Big Dog laughed, reminding me of the Rattlesnake Incident.

"What do you expect? I've only lived in cities until a few years ago!"

Well, for all you other City Folk, let me present our Croc Video. Shot by Big Dog and quickly slapped together by moi. Be sure you have the volume turned up.

Fat Farm

It sounded like water spewing out of a leak in a pipe. All too familiar. But there isn't any water coming to the garden house. Or is there?

Back on the ranch and going through a bit of a heatwave, I've been busy fixing and adjusting our irrigation systems. On one trip to the garden house to pick up more drippers, I noticed the distinct hiss of water spewing out. I didn't know of any buried pipes there, but you have to investigate these things, so I pulled away the board covering up the gap between the ground and the raised garden house and that's when I see it.

The torso of the biggest wound up snake I had ever seen on the ranch.

It was giant. Like a boa constrictor. The size of a baby's head.

I inadvertently let out a small squeal and excitedly run off to tell Big Dog who said, "That's a rattler."
"It's no rattlesnake! It's too big. And it wasn't rattling, it was hissing at me."
Of course, I wanted him to see it too so I dragged him out to the shed.
"Where? I can't see anything."
"Look, there. See the giant torso?"
This time, I could see more than just the torso, though. This time, there was the raised head, alert and focused on us. And the head was...yes, a rattlesnake head!
"Oh, god, you're right! It is a rattlesnake!"
And it was pissed off.

We scrammed and by the time I had to go back to the garden house, Snake had split, but I can't stop thinking about it.

Do rattlesnakes get that big? How many rodents did it have to eat to get so super-sized? I know our squirrels are giant, so it really shouldn't come as a surprise to see obese snakes. Or had it just eaten one and was I just seeing the belly bulge?

Bad Dog & The Giant Peach

I love how my garden is doing this year! For the first time since coming to The Ranch, I feel like I am doing something right. There are beans and tomatoes, squash and peas, corn and cucumbers, buckwheat and amaranth and even broom sorghum growing.


NOW I understand why people grow their own corn!

The orchards, on the other hand, have been behaving strangely this year. Things are ripening at odd times. The plums, peaches and nectarines came all at once and we have the fewest peaches and nectarines ever. Oh, but they are bigggggggg! And, oh so tasty!
Peach Girl with Friends

Bliss.....

Season of The Visitors

Here they come!! Apricots! Peaches! People! When it's Stone Fruit Season at The Ranch, it is also the season of visitors here at The Ranch.....and the Central Coast in general. (We can always spot the out-of-towners at our local markets. They're too happy, or too loud, or too clean.)

We're also getting the furry or feathered visitors, too. Deer are coming back down from the hills (guess our New Age Redneck didn't get them all!), several quail families have taken up residence, the wild turkeys sometimes come through. An owl couple love to perch on our fence post, as does a juvenile hawk. There's a bunny living in one of our gardens and I am praying he/she never finds a mate. If it stays dry enough, the big cats will also start coming down to the creek.

Pretty Wild Things

I wish I knew the names of all the pretty wild things growing on our ranch...

Wild Thing 1


Wild Thing 2


Wild Thing 3


Oh, I know this one. It's a monkeyflower.

Getting Back to Me

Has the situation in Japan affected me that much? I seem to have lost the urge to write, draw, create. Maybe it was seeing all that destruction. I thought my trip to Japan would cure this weird ennui. I thought I would encounter a changed (for the better) nation, ready to shed its old ways and come together to face this immense challenge. Instead, of course, we found out just how much TEPCO was covering up the extent of the nuclear disaster. Bureaucrats were more concerned about "not causing a panic" than disseminating proper information, while politicians merely sought to use the crisis as political leverage in their own factional or partisan struggles.

What's the point?

To add to my listlessness, there was an interminable wait for our vehicle to be repaired in Los Angeles, delaying my return to The Garden...then more matters to attend to in LA. It wasn't until a couple of days ago that we finally got back.

"Everything will be dead," I moaned to Big Dog nearly every day in LA. He was so sick of hearing me whine about how I needed to get back.
"They're just plants."
"And we weren't there for the major gopher action -- I'm sure they've taken over the entire place." OK, so Big Dog cares naught about plants, but maybe talk of gophers will make him want to get back, too.
"There's nothing we can do about it, so stop complaining. I've been holed up here in LA all during the time you were in Japan!"
"I should have stayed longer," I frowned.
"Well, what do you want me to do about it?"
We were testy, testy, testy. I could have told him that he could have 1) rented a vehicle! or 2) taken the train back! or 3) borrowed a vehicle from his family -- everyone seems to have more cars than they need. But I was too...listless.

But here on The Ranch, it seems like life carried on without us. A few seedlings did die. The greenhouse seems infested with ants and aphids. There are surprisingly few strawberries and not a single cherry left. Much has bolted either from the heat or water-stress. And there are gopher mounds everywhere, but amazingly they have not taken over the place. Many plants are still alive. Some are actually thriving! My summer garden is a jungle of haphazardly planted things, weeds, volunteer arugula and chard.

I was wrong to think I could find strength in any society. Nature is where my power source lies. Maybe I can finally get back to Me.

Wings of Joy

"I think they've hatched," my brother writes me from Tokyo last week. "I saw the male taking bugs back to the birdhouse over and over."

During the first week of April, he noticed a shijukara building a nest in the birdhouse his son made last summer. (I looked up the bird. It's called a "Japanese great tit" in English but there's something so oxymoronic about "Japanese great tit" that I prefer to use the Japanese name.) Back and forth it went, for about a week, carrying bits of string and fluff. And then, they stopped seeing the bird. He went online to find out more and read that it takes about 2 weeks for a shijukara egg to hatch. "So I think the due date is around the end of April," he wrote a while earlier.

"It was raining all day yesterday and so there wasn't much bird action, but the chicks must be starving because the male was real busy today. He flies out, gets a whole bunch of food in his beak, and then perches on a branch to the left of the birdhouse. He looks around to make sure no predators are watching, then darts into the house. About 30 seconds later, he pokes his head out of the house, looks around cautiously, and then he's off again looking for more food." Bro's emails are all bird reports.

Thousands of Japanese are still living in shelters. Tens of thousands will have a long year of rebuilding. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, will be affected by the earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster for months to come. No one knows where Japan is headed or what the future holds. I'm glad the shijukara couple and their brand new chicks are giving hope and peace and strength (not to mention hours of entertainment) for my brother and his family.

Gardening Life, Planting Hope

Two months.
That's how long it's been since the Triple Disasters in Japan.

Two months of chaos, pain, despair, anger. Two months of love, generosity, pride, hope.
Two months of an emotional roller coaster ride.

For me, it's been a month in Hawaii and a month at the ranch. My month at the ranch must have been especially healing because I am a little calmer, a little more hopeful. You can't help but be affected by the miracle of nature. A frantic month of planting, planting, planting and getting my gardens ready for the summer has given me an inner peace I could not have hoped for anywhere else. Little seeds a fraction of a millimeter have germinated into nice, healthy plants. Even my asparagus seeds that weren't doing anything for weeks have all germinated, sending the tiniest of stalks up above the soil. Just when I thought my eggplant seeds were duds, here they come! The tea plants haven't germinated yet but they could take a couple of months so I'm still waiting, patiently. Gardening is not for the impatient.

When humans, or the things they create, destroy, there is only destruction. But while nature destroys, she also rebuilds.

Lettuces sparkling in the afternoon sun...

Chamomile growing on all our driveways!

Not from The Ranch but the butterfly sanctuary in Angangueo, Mexico. I am praying that the narco violence does not destroy their habitat.

Winter Harvest (Part 3)

The rains came back last week, and with it, the mushrooms.

When we first got back to the ranch in January, we had plenty of mushrooms, but with the warm dry weather, they'd all dried up. I had been watering the chanterelle patch near the oak swing, but something was nibbling them away, too.

"Prices are way down this year," our neighbor from down the valley told us earlier. His son had made a nice little bundle last year, but they say there's a glut of chanterelles bringing down wholesale prices. Knowing what a good mushroom hunter the son is, I got them to come look for the fungi on our ranch, promising them that I'd give them half of their haul after I dried them.

That was last month and those mushrooms are all dried and shriveled up, ready to use like dried porcini or shiitake mushrooms. (If you are interested in drying your mushrooms, it's real easy. Just wash, then spread out on a towel until they are less soggy, then onto a paper towel. Leave them out until every bit of moisture is gone before you put them away. Patience is the key. I've ruined several batches by putting them away too soon. Better if you can just forget about them for a few months.)

Now we've had several days of torrential rain and the mykos are back. A short walk through our back woods gave me a bucketful of chanterelles and a handful of what I think are oyster mushrooms.

Chanterelles are best in simple dishes, I think. You want to be able to enjoy their flavor. People around here say they saute them with garlic and butter, but I like them with just a little sprinkle of salt and pepper and a little drizzle of cream and/or a splash of white wine. If I have time, I'll make chanterelle ravioli. Serve them tossed in olive oil with freshly grated parmesan. Mmm.

Now, do I try the oyster mushroom or not???

Winter Harvest (Part 2)

I've been seeing a lot of bees these days and the hummingbirds are starting to come out. It's as if none of us can wait for the longer days of spring. The sun's out, it's warm, so let's get busy!

And so we have. Cleaning up the mess from pruning, doing a winter burn, re-staking posts, fixing fences... While doing so, I found a patch of miner's lettuce, between the garrya (silktassel) tree and Outsider Peach (named only for its location outside the orchards, not social status.) How could I have missed it all these years?

Even now, in the winter, nature keeps giving. I've been collecting and drying early spring oregano, yerba buena, mint..... Nature's such a generous lover. Will YOU be my Valentine?

The heart-shaped leaves of miner's lettuce make it the perfect Valentine's Day salad!

Winter Harvest (Part 1)

There's not a whole lot of food growing on the ranch this time of year. Last year's chard is still going strong, but my new lettuces seem not to be growing at all. Other residents have a few things growing, but nothing ready to harvest, either. One exception is the riot of arugula in the middle of the Kinu Orchard where my vegetable garden used to be two summers ago. Over the months, they've self-seeded and established themselves next to the wild oregano. There's also baby chard and collards popping up, too. Nothing's been tilled, or worked, or watered. Just nature having its way. Accidental permaculture. I love it!

In fact, knowing how much arugula seems to like our land, I've been tossing arugula seeds all over the place, hoping they'll keep out some of the nastier weeds (the ones we seem to be allergic to, for example.)

Some people don't like the spiciness of arugula (also called "rocket" or "roquette") but both Big Dog and I love it. It gets mixed in with salads, sprinkled on top of pizzas, stuffed into calzones. Big Dog loves thin slices of steak on a mountain of arugula, with a simple vinaigrette and bits of shaved parmesan. Now, with the seemingly endless supply, I've been parboiling them for an o-hitashi side dish, sauteing them with garlic and olive oil, adding them to my miso soups and pastas (nice with pine nuts!) I think I'll salt-pickle them into next, after we go through our hakusai (nappa cabbage) tsukemono.

Arugula gone wild.

Almost Spring?

Everything is budding.

Our lone pear tree inside the Kinu Orchard, Pomona, ever the impatient girl, keeps flowering at odd times anyway, but you can almost hear the hum of vibrating energy from the others, too.



Daffodils are starting to swell...grasses are growing ("Means it's time to mow," groans Big Dog. "And gophers are getting busy," I follow)... Is spring already here?

Beware of Gifts

Our third week of pruning and our achy-breaky bods are complaining big time. It's hard not to keep at it, though, since we've been blessed with beautiful weather during the day. The area's gotten more than 15 inches of rain this year, but not a drop after the first week. Mushrooms which were so prolific have all dried up, as has much of the ground that was so wet and muddy earlier.

This year, the residents at the back of our property, the McCs who have much more experience at these things (he's a groundskeepers, she's a horticulturist) helped us out a few days. I guess they know what they're doing, though it takes some effort for me not to yowl in pain as giant limbs come off.

"See how the crotch has some kind of fungus?" Mama McC points out to me. Fungus in crotches is NOT appealing, I agree, but...

Their fearlessness has completely emboldened Big Dog who is going chain-saw happy.

"I'm taking you down!" he announces to the giant apple tree. If this were a cartoon, the apple tree would be rearing up, I know.
"I'm sure it's going to be a lot happier now, with more light and air," I say, more to placate myself. If Mama McC is a surgeon, Big Dog sometimes looks like The Butcher of the Orchards.

That's why it's so nice when I have the whole orchard to myself. Like today, when the others were working other orchards and I got to spend the entire day picking up the prunings in peace, disturbed only by the antics of the chickens.

"Well, Freddie, whacha got there?" I chat to the rooster who's a little Freddie Mercury. He's got a worm in his mouth and he's giving it to Two Tone, the black and white hen. I am touched.
"Aren't you a little gentleman!"

Is there chivalry in the animal kingdom? I wonder, but even before I can pick up more branches and twigs, there's a loud squawk as Freddie tries to mount Two Tone.

"Get off me, you creep!" She goes running into the bushes, wings a-flutter.

"So, you buy her dinner and immediately expect her to put out? You're just like the rest of them." I laugh. But Two Tone wasn't about to be bought off with a little morsel, which makes her a lot tougher and smarter than SOME women I know.

Perfect Days Continue

Not a drop of rain since the New Year's storm.
The T-shirt weather continues.
Sweet sap is running out of our apple trees.
Are we supposed to be pruning in this kind of weather?

Tunnel of Love

How about some nice pictures for a change?

Original Sin

The gophers got almost all of R's potatoes and she fears the garlic is next.
"And I spent nearly twenty dollars on those!" she cries.
Her fiancee, J drives up with dozens of new starters -- squash, peas, beans joining their 40 tomato plants already in the ground -- and we talk gophers for a while. They're thinking of the chewing gum ploy so I tell them to be careful not to get human scent on the gum. I am beginning to think that was my problem last year. (Our house painter told us about her friend who uses empty aluminum cans, buried every three feet, around his vegetable plot. The gophers hit them when they burrow and the sound of their little nails against the metal freaks them out. Or so she says.)

They've gotten all my hollyhocks and many of my cosmos. (I'm hoping that the cages protect my food plants.) I've gotten 3 gophers so far this year. It sickens me each time I kill a gopher.

All this carnage makes me think of Original Sin. I don't think it has anything to do with our knowledge of right and wrong, but our need to kill life to sustain our own. The gopher situation has thrown it in my face, but every one of us, and in fact, every animal, is a Creature of Sin.

"That's why I'm a vegan," you might say. But as long as you are killing plants for food, you also have The Mark. A purist would only eat fruit.

I believe the real Garden of Eden would only have plants and a few insects, like bees and worms. No taking of one life for another.

Today, my snails go back into the wild. We're leaving The Ranch tomorrow and I haven't built up the nerve to cook them. I am sure BD is thrilled not to be witness to another part of my weirdness and I'm just as happy to get away from the Killing Fields for a while.

May Day and Midnight Express

"...it's one of the few countries that actually celebrate May Day..."
Huh?

That was our reaction to one CNN reporter who was talking about Cuba a few years ago. Didn't she know that there are many, many countries that celebrate May Day? I remember the labor organization festivities all around Tokyo every May first. Sometimes they were harassed by right wing fanatics AND police. I remember one very tiny protest -- maybe 25 people? -- surrounded by an army of cops. Earlier the same day, there was a demonstration by the militant right, in front of the Russian Embassy, with giant vans blaring old war songs and propaganda. In between the songs and shouts, they also taunted the handful of police. Sadly, an all too typical scene.

So. Happy May Day to you.

But it was a "mayday" -- which comes from "venez m'aider" or "Come save me!" so if you're ever in a desperate situation in a French-speaking area, you'll be fine -- in the kitchen last night. The snails made a break for it under cover of the night.

By morning, the little mollusks were crawling all over the kitchen. Under the cupboards, inside the sink, all over the walls... Thank god they don't move very fast. I think I was able to foil their midnight express attempt. I HOPE I was successful or Big Dog will be in for a big surprise when he steps on a snail in his bare feet.