Greenhouse Liberated

With the Cabbage Palm moved to the arboretum, the plants in the NE corner of the greenhouse have room to breathe. 

The plant I thought was a Philodendron Xanadu, previously buried behind the giant cabbage palm, now has the corner to itself and is blooming. And may be an Acanthus mollis, although those flowers are not fragrant and these sure are. But maybe something else in that corner is perfuming the room. I'll check and report later

Flowers of the P. Xanadu

Even the owl is now visible

 This tree still reaches the ceiling, but now its flowers can be seen. And possibly these are the flowers that are so very fragrant in the corner.

This epi is not in that corner, but it seems more visible  anyway.

This cymbidium is on its fifth stalk of flowers this winter and is happy to be free of the giant palm hovering over that entire end of the greenhouse.

Outdoors is not yet as happy a story. Overnight, wind broke the tallest piece of the cabbage palm so we made more pieces and root toned them. Johnny tied blue flags (old t-shirts) around the tree pieces and their stabilizing fence posts. It's not a beautiful grove of palms yet but we have hopes...

Nearby, the Camas is just beginning to bloom... lifting everyone's spirits.

 

New Zealand Cabbage Palm

The huge tree -like plant in the greenhouse was too tall for the two story ceiling so it bent over and crawled above the bars that other plants hung from and spread it's enormous sword-like leaves over everything in its path. I do not know where I got it originally and do not know what it is, other than way too big now for the greenhouse. So I researched online and *think* it is a New Zealand Cabbage Palm, Cordyline australis. Wikipedia says: Cordyline australis grows up to 20 metres (66 feet) tall with a stout trunk 1.5 to 2 m (4 ft 11 in to 6 ft 7 in) in diameter. That is way too tall for our greenhouse. So...

We maneuvered it outside and into the bucket of the tractor with me standing in the bucket holding on to it. Of course, it broke off, so we then had two pieces to transport to the arboretum's Australia section, soon to be the Australia/New Zealand section. By the time we got the first piece in the ground, there were four pieces to plant. So we now have a grove of Cabbage Palms, all root-toned and hopefully eager to sprout roots. 

Here are the photos of our New Zealand Cabbage Palm grove... well, first the tree inside the greenhouse before the transfer...

It started up from the pot with a bare stem, looking innocent enough...

Then made leaves as it climbed ever higher with  side branches along the way...

Until it went over the bar on the ceiling that other plants hang from... crushing everything in its path...

...and was carried off in the tractor bucket in pieces after the soft stem (trunk?) broke when we moved it...

Maybe you can see the curved piece in front of the tractor below and the well-leafed piece to the left of the tractor. 

Johnny, of course, did most of the digging and planting. Below he is planting the broken top. Every piece was root-toned and planted. The tall trees in the background are Eucalyptus. They are very happy here. I hope the cabbage palm pieces (if that's what it is) will be happy, too. They are said to live along the west coast from California northward into Canada.

I'll get photos soon of the liberated plants in the greenhouse. I think they are relieved and happy.

 

 

APRIL SHOWERS

 April has had plenty of showers so far... and frost. Spring has been slow to arrive. The daffodils are finally blooming well and the grass is growing. I am very slowly liberating the garden and flower beds of their winter's accumulation of weeds. 

The lawn llama celebrated Easter

 

My quarterly beach walk for CoastWatch from McPhillips Park was on March 18. I always check on the Black Oystercatchers that I monitor at this site beginning in May.

Always some hang gliders on nice days.

Johnny checked on eagle nests while I hiked the beach. And found one at Sitka Sedge.

 

A week later, he headed for California. The only photos are from Munazza and Steve while he was there helping with a Ren Xue project. He left here on March 25th, going to Munazza's sister Faiza's home first for projects there (and lots of food... he seems to eat his way through California visits). Then onward to San Carlos and a big project there. He arrived home on April 4th. Here are the photos from the San Carlos clan...

This is the backdrop he engineered for the Ren Xue retreat Munazza and Kestrel are working at. It had to be designed so that it could be taken down, packed and shipped to wherever the retreat is in the U.S. each time. He says it took a lot of head scratching to get it to work. It extends upward 12 feet

And here is the San Carlos clan, from left to right Jupiter (the dog), Kestrel 17, Munazza, Cedrus 15, Johnny, and Steve. Our kids and grandkids have seriously outgrown us.

While Johnny was gone, I was goat-keeping. So far we have had 3 does kid with a total of 7 kids, 6 bucklings and 1 doeling. They all look identical.

The only way I can tell them apart is by very tiny collars... blue for one set, red for another and none for the last. Since I leave babies with their moms and the moms have no trouble telling their children apart, I trust that everyone is nursing from their own moms.

The big news across the U.S. was the total eclipse on April 8, which we saw none of since we were far outside the range where totality would be seen and it was cloudy besides. Our lawn llama was taking no chances and wore eclipse glasses.

 

 Happy Spring!

March Madness

 March has come in roaring like a Lion, as the saying goes... although it's more like the piercing howl of a Snow Leopard. For the first time this winter, we have had lots of snow ever since March arrived. 

At first, it was just enough to make the local maxim... that it always snows when the daffodils bloom... come true.

 

Then it managed to knock trees down across our driveway. Johnny (with very little help from me) spent all day Sunday, March 3rd, sawing down those trees and many others that were threatening to fall. He hauled them to the goat field although the goats are not much interested in foraging in the snow.

Today, March 4th, was truly impressive. It snowed all night and all morning. It is melting now, the afternoon of the 4th, and sheeting off the roof, but still several inches deep on the ground. I took some photos this morning from the barn, looking toward north and west and south. And I took photos from upstairs in the house of the snow sheeting off the roof after melting began. All day we have been having thundering snow slides from one roof down to the next. 

Here are the photos... I will let them tell the story.

 

The Red-winged Blackbird that owns our pond and its cattails arrived a couple weeks ago and sings daily from his tree in the pond. He sang through the snow this morning until it got so heavy, even he gave up and left. 

From the aisle of the barn, where I was out of the snowstorm, I took photos of the farm.

Johnny's shop with the overhang that serves now as a horse and dog shelter. In years past it housed sheep and later llamas. Now just Nightingale (horse) and Annie (dog) hang out there during inclement weather.

The "carriage house" sits west of Johnny's shop on the other side of the arena. The carriage house is a grandiose name for a building with a tack room and open bays for horse trailers and horse-drawn cart and surrey

This lone sequoia sits at the corner of three fields, planted soon after we moved here almost 50 years ago to provide shade for the animals. The goats have kept it pruned up off the ground.

The pond is to the left with a bench on the walkway across the dam. The walkway leads to the orchard and horse barn, which now only has one horse and her dog when the weather is good. At night I bring them back to the shop overhang by the arena.

The above photo was taken from the upstairs of the house, looking south across the side yard between house and barn. Those curled sheets of icy snow reached three feet in length before crashing to the roof of the greenhouse/jungle room below. The one sheet coming off the roof to the right, visible farther out, grew to five feet before collapsing to the ground below. All made tremendous booms when they fell. And are, at this writing, mid-day on Monday, March 4th, still falling and booming. 

Winter is not giving up without a snowy... and loud... March tantrum.
 

Catching Up...

Bird surveys have taken up most of February so far. Again, it has been challenging to find days when it's not raining or foggy. One non-rainy day I took photos of some of the birds that come outside the milk room for feed every morning. I post "incidental" lists on e-bird of the birds I can see from the milk room windows while milking and feeding goats. Here are some of them:

California Quail by the score...

Mourning Dove

Golden-crowned Sparrow

Spotted Towhee

Dark-eyed Junco

Red-winged Blackbird

Steller's Jay

Chestnut-backed Chickadee

Red-breasted Nuthatch

 

Fox Sparrow

 

 I don't know how to do anything with my wonderful camera but point and shoot, so that's what I do. Birds manage to come out recognizable even in the rain through dirty milk room windows. 

Today, Feb. 29, 2024, a new bird for the year appeared outside that window while I was milking... a Great Blue Heron. It flew from the pond and perched high in a tree far away, but my camera was up to the challenge.

 

And the Red-winged Blackbird that visits daily sang and showed off his bright red wing spots.
 

 

 

 

Those were the happy events of the month. There was also much sadness when good friend Blythe, who introduced us to Qi Gong and did Ren Yuan with us every Sunday she was able, fell into a coma and died ten days later, on Feb. 28. Over twenty years of chemotherapy for her lymphoma dampened her immune system and made her vulnerable. Blythe was a vibrant, kind, giving person, the sort of person who makes everyone around her feel good. May her beautiful spirit remain with us forever.