Critters

These days we have had many wildlife spottings in our urban oasis.  As a child, our garden was home to snakes, deer, rabbits, turtles, chipmunks and even the occasional gopher or mole. We have a different ball game in our Los Angeles garden.  We’ve spotted raccoons and opossum, but most of our visitors are insects and birds, with an occasional lizard.

Remember that moment in spring when everyone and everything is searching for a mate?  I am reminded often these days, because I’m spotting parents teaching their newborn babies how to behave.

For the past few days, we’ve been watching a pair of black phoebe’s hanging out in our garden.   

When I’ve gone outside to photograph them, they’ve moved away a little bit.  They are always together, or one is calling to the other.

I wish you could see the little tuxedos that black phoebes where- they’re one of my favorite birds!  I’m sure the little fledgling will move on soon.  Until then, it’s fun to spot them perched on our tomato cages; David and I hope they eat the bad bugs not the good.

Last week I attended a training on an urban ecology curriculum at the Center for Urban Resilience where I had the pleasure to meet an animal behavior professor who specializes in crow behavior.  We learned about how crows can live for over 30 years in the same area, and are the second most intelligent animal on the planet.

This is the palm in front of our house.  If you look closely, you’ll see there are two crows here.  These two have been noisy recently. The day I came home from learning about crows, I noticed they were squawking at each other.  So, I asked about it the next day and was told that the parents are reprimanding the baby crows this time of year. I’m not sure, but my guess is the baby is the one on the right.

I pulled some long grasses and weeds from the front bed.  I plan to re-pot the succulents soon so I prepared the area around them.

I found one of our baby praying mantises after pulling weeds!  It was camera shy, starting to run when I pointed the camera at it.

So I grabbed it.  The mantid lept from my fingers, I scooped it up again and pointed the camera at my hand.

It’s alien-like face cracks me up.  This little guy seemed curious why I was holding it. After snapping my photo, I dropped it again and then grabbed it to place it on the nasturtiums.  Slippery little one.

We have more critters, and evidence of them, in the back yard.

There are squirrels that visit the avocado trees.  Sometimes we we spot them; Rosie usually sees them first.  Usually we find signs that they have come around because they leave their leftovers on the ground for us to compost.

The avocados are growing and our October harvest looks promising.

The Bacon avocado tree will have it’s larger crop this fall, while the Zutano will have its smaller one.

Both trees are going to have a much smaller harvest, because they were pruned… probably for the first time ever.  

Pruned is a gentle word for what was done.

There used to be a large branch practically resting on David’s red SUV. Now we will need our neighbor’s roofing ladder to pick any of the avocadoes that mature.  Sometimes the squirrels help us out by nibbling on a corner, and then knocking them down.  It’s probably not the best practice, but I just cut off their corner and eat my side of the fruit.

While our avocado harvest will be smaller, our mint harvest is not in jeopardy.

The mint is flowering and the flies love it!  It’s kinda gross to see so many flies swarming around the flowers.  I just try to remember that it’s important to have all sorts of critters and pollinators in the garden.  We’ll be pruning the mint that is growing over the sidewalk, so I just brought a huge bunch into the house as a bouquet.

In the backyard garden, we also have flies on the borage.

The borage with the ants and aphids will get pulled out this week. This is the other borage flower, near the eggplants and squash. I love the colors on this fly!

I try to snap insect pictures when I can. (Sometimes I catch the insect in the process.)  The last picture to share today is from over a week ago.  I just finished posting a blog, and went outside to pick tomatoes.  And I found this guy:

As it was so large, we considered keeping it to watch it pupate.  Then I read that the cocoons are buried in the soil.  We haven’t had a hornworm problem (this is the only one I’ve ever seen in three years) so we let it be.  Hopefully this isn’t a sign of what’s to come.

 

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Harvest Monday 6.3.13

So I’ve been reading Harvest Monday posts, and been wanting to do them.  We haven’t had much that we’ve been harvesting these days, aside from a sprig of basil or mint here or there.

But it is beginning!

As I posted earlier this week, David and I ate the first two green beans from the garden. Today we picked three more!

The bottom two are Provider beans and the top is from our tricolor mix. We have a lot more beans on the way, and David and I are already researching pickled bean recipes.

We also snagged our first two jalepeno peppers from our plant.  One was laying below it, falled from an overcrowded plant. The other we picked, hoping to let the others grow bigger instead of falling to their death.

This weekend we also cleared out one of radish patches to make space for more. We’ve been trying to get radishes, lettuce and carrots in more often so that we constantly have some available. These radishes are destined for pickling.

With just a slight hint of green on the outside, these are a variety of watermelon radish. Right after we picked these, we went out and planted more seeds, as they’re a favorite.  (Of course, we haven’t harvested the French Breakfast or Black radishes yet.)

Saturday morning we had a visit from our handyman. A pipe broke under our sink Friday night, and we spent the night without water.  When he arrived to do the repair, one of his coworkers went out back to pick avocados.  Once people know about our trees, they always come back for more!  We helped him pick about a dozen avocados, and then picked a dozen more for ourselves!

This tree is finishing up right now.  We just purchased a new avocado fruit picker pole, and with a ladder and the pole we think we can get another dozen or two over the next couple of weeks.  And then we wait for the other tree to grow.

After picking avocados, we had a big salad for dinner and used lettuce from our garden.

The summer leaf mix was starting to form nice heads. Our lettuce patch is finishing up right now, and we’re waiting for the new lettuce patches to fill in.  It’s going to be a while, as many of the new ones were eaten by slugs and snails and didn’t make it. We seeded another patch after picking these and hope they fare better.

While cleaning the lettuce, this little guy scurried by.I know it’s a blurry picture, but it was moving quickly.  I love the colors!

Recently I’ve been really interested in the critters on our plants, and would love bug book suggestions for a little summer reading.

 

 

Plans, avocados and a seed bomb!

I just sat down to eat some leftover Thai curry after giving the new garden beds a good soaking.  It’s supposed to hit 90 the next two days (and then be back in the 60s and rain (?) on Monday.  Rain would be wonderful!  California snow pack was low this year and the reservoirs were all low.  The horticulture teacher at school keeps talking about how dry it’s been.

Dave and I finished up the remaining lasagna garden bed this past weekend.  I just planted the sugar baby watermelons, and sweet dumpling squash and gave them a little B-1 to help the roots during transplant.  Actually, I just looked up the B-1 thing, because we bought a jug at Home Depot a while back on the saleman’s recommendation.  Turns out, it hasn’t been proven to help.

Last night while watching The Voice, I redrew the backyard plan.  If you can tell the difference, the inked plants have been planted and the penciled plants have not.

Notice the new bed on the lower right.  David’s first garden project of the summer will be building a squash/ melon A frame structure.  We have bamboo that we can cut down and lash together, helping keep our budget for this garden minimal.

The seedlings are coming along.  There will be more squash to plant soon, although we’re still waiting for the Malali Watermelon to germinate and the Mexican Sour Gherkin’s to arrive in the mail.

Speaking of which, we’re also trying to figure out how to get lemongrass.  There’s a woman in the community garden that has bunches, but I haven’t had a chance to introduce myself and ask for a clump.  I also read today about planting a piece of lemongrass that you get from the grocery store.  I seeded some in our greenhouse at school a couple of months ago, and it’s coming along so slowly.  David and I almost bought a plant from the man at the Culver City Farmer’s Market last night, but we’re being patient.

We’ve been patiently waiting for our bushtit to return to her nest.  Neither of us have seen her in two days.  Either she’s in her nest and not moving around, or she decided she didn’t want to nest in our tree after all!  It could have been that David got out the ladder and decided to pick avocados!

Notice we have two types of avocados  Bacon and Zutano.  They are both thin skinned and have more water than a Haas. We’re finishing picking from one tree, and the other has nickel-sized fruit (and a few full size that the squirrels are still knocking down for us).

We also have a Ponderosa Lemon tree who’s been dropping these huge lemons for us!

I’ve taught my students about guerrilla gardening. We discussed gardening as a political issue, and I told them about some things that have happened in Los Angeles.  I wish we had time to watch The Garden; we spoke of it briefly. I also told them about Ron Finley, and how he was cited for planting a garden on the parkway in front of his house. They were all shocked.  I think they liked Finley’s tag line, “Plant some shit!” the most!

Those who wanted to made seed bombs in school, and I think some of them took some, but I intentionally didn’t pay attention.  I have a vending machine in the classroom, and will be refilling it this week.

So David and I decided we needed to throw a few in our yard and see how they grow.  Here’s 3 days after “throwing” it.

Everything is growing!  It’s growing faster than it can be eaten by snails and caterpillars. Hope your spring is blooming!

Nest building time!

This morning I planned to rake avocado leaves for the last lasagna bed.  I brought my camera to snap a few pictures of our impressive and prolific avocado trees.  There are two trees that sometimes shed avocados for us to gather, while other times we have the challenge of picking them from a ladder.

Notice the tree shades our compost bins.  We often scoop a handful of leaves to toss on top of the fresh kitchen waste.  The leaves have been great for us, and our dirt-making.

I quickly noticed that it would be hard to sweep the driveway, as our cars were in the way.

How good are your avocado spotting skills?  I feel like mine are pretty good, and I only saw one when I took this picture (by the forked branches slightly left of center) but now I see another one!  These are within reach with the ladder.  These trees have a lot more avocados hiding about 45 feet up.

As I took this picture, I heard a bird chirping at me and turned at saw this:

A NEST!!

It’s about 8 feet off the ground and it’s hanging next to our precious avocados!  I quickly called David over and we grabbed a ladder for closer inspection. (Later I wondered if we’d be able to continue harvesting avocados, as we’re finishing up the ones we grabbed two weeks ago.  This question is still to be determined.)

A closeup of the nest made of fiber from palm trees, red bits from a Bottlebrush tree, straw from our garden and bits of fiber from our laundry on the line??

This past Thursday I noticed that there was a tiny grey bird on the power lines, and it was making alarm calls.  It sat on the line like Black Phoebe does, and chipped angrily like a mockingbird.  Rosie and I listened to it’s chatter, and quickly moved away from the tree and the power lines, as we finished up watering the backyard garden.

Today, upon spotting this nest, we thought we saw a flitter of birds around it.  I decided to stick around and try to find out what was going on.  I quietly waited next to the cars, and saw two birds fly into the next, noticed the nest pulsating from activity, and then saw them fly off again.  Mom and Dad are building their home!  I snapped a few pictures of the happy couple as they hopped around outside of their nest, and then went inside to confirm the species.

Hopping around on the branch with a piece of nesting material in it’s mouth.  Anyone know if this is the male or female?

A closer shot of the same individual getting ready to go into the nest.

Bringing a bigger piece to the nest.

During all of these photos, Rosie patiently waited for me to throw the ball.

Here’s a view of where I can safely stand to watch the nest.  Notice that our little area is quite small.  Shadow doesn’t seem to realize that he’s disturbing the nest, which is located in the cluster of leaves above him.  Also check out the leaves I was going to rake.  We just raked up the avocado leaves a month ago, and there looks like there’s enough for our last lasagna garden… if only I could rake them up.

After spending some time inside, and then running back out to listen to the bird’s calls, I am 98% sure that we have a nesting pair of bushtits!  The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a great bird site, with lots of calls.  I also was excited to see that I went to summer camp, and then later worked with, the photographer who took the identification photo.  It’s a great feeling to have a connection to both my past and to the natural world.

More nesting updates will follow as we watch them, and try to stay out of their way.  We’re excited for them to eat our grubs and caterpillars!!