05-26-02025

Second Lemon Harvest with Baked Salmon

I harvest two very small but sweet lemons from my tree. In this photo I already harvest the first with second in the lower right being picked soon after the photo was taken.

I sliced both lemons:

Reserved a couple of slices and then put the remainder on this baked salmon pictured below:

05-10-02025

New Coast Sage and Lemon Tree

Here is a New Coast Sage Plant I purchased at the Pacifica Gardening Sale and replanted in a new pot:

The lemon tree is producing lemons:

04-25-02025

Lemons on the Lemon Tree

The lemon tree has more fruit close to being ready for harvest:

03-25-02025

Death, Hiking, and Cactus Garden

Yesterday, 24 March 02025, my 43 year-old brother Jesse Robert Nelson died from a brain aneurysm. Today I took a long hike in the nearby San Pedro Valley Park as part of my reaction to this unexpected death. Here are some photos I took on my trail.

A Redwood tree:

San Pedro Creek:

Section of the trail:

Eucalyptus Trees:

This hike was the beginnings of my own grief journey over Jesse's death. I needed this nature reminder of how life continues and persists over many generations of us humans. A sense of long time that our natural world places my grief and sadness in the longer context and a reminder of my own mortality.

On my walk back to our townhouse, I passed this neighbor's cactus garden that I particularly liked:

03-01-02025

Replanting Ficus and Verbena 'Paseo Racho'

I replanted the Ficus into a better pot; removing the plant from it's container, the temporary container shows how root-bound the plant had become:

Here is the Ficus in it's new pot:

I also went to the Pacifica Public Garden, who was holding a plant sale, and purchased this California native Verbene Paseo Racho grass and replanted into a new pot as well:

02-21-02025

Bridget, Mexican Chimenea, and Bridget

I took this photo of Bridget, one half of the sisters my wife and I adopted in earlier this year.

Pictured is our Chimenea, which we purchased in Colorado Springs.

02-16-02025

Kumquat Graft to Lemon Tree

My attempt to start some Kumquat seedlings failed but I decided to try grafting a small section of the seedling to the existing lemon tree. I lacked actual growers tape but decided to use cellophane tape instead to keep the new graft in place.

I'm monitoring the progress and see if this graft will take. A new garden experiment as the weather in Pacifica is starting to feel more like Spring.

01-02-02025

First Lemon

Today I harvested the first lemon from the lemon tree pictured below:

The lemon on the kitchen counter:

.

I sliced the lemon and the taste was surprisingly sweet with a more of a mild lemon taste:

My wife and I enjoyed adding the lemons to some adult beverages for a 2025 New Year's treat. Consuming a fruit from a tree (or in this case more of a bush) offers a level of satisfaction that is missed when purchasing fruit from the grocery store.

12-19-02024

Kumquat Clippings and Lemon Self Portrait

I recently took two clippings from a Kumquat tree in an attempt to them root and become the latest in my citrus orangery (sans oranges at this time!). After applying root powder, here are the clippings in a temporary pot:

My first lemon fruit is close to being ready to harvest, I took this self-portrait with the out-of-focus in lemon:

This is likely my last post for 02024, one of my 02025 New Year resolutions is to write a blog post at least once a month.

11-27-02024

Lemon Tree Video

Here is a short video of the lemon tree with a number of different fruit in various stages of growth. I've been flower-pruning the extra flowers.

10-30-02024

Thinning Lemons

My long-suffering lemon tree has a number of nascent green lemons and so I have been thinning these tiny lemons in order to give the remaining lemons more resources. From this cluster of lemons:

I removed a couple of the lemons, here is a photo of me holding one of those unripe lemons to give it scale:

09-14-02024

Lemon on Lemon Tree

This far, the lemon tree's largest fruit is growing with other lemons slowly growing. Good to see and I hope that later in the year, this will be the first lemon harvested.

06-08-02024

Transplanting Salvia Amistad and Lemon Update

I decided to transplant our Salvia Amistad into it's new textured teal pot seen in this photo:

Here is the final result in the current garden area:

I attempted to do a close-up of the baby lemons and her is the blurry results:

06-01-02024

Red Dwarf Jade Plant

A few weeks ago I purchased on sale a Crassula ovata or "Crosby's Dwarf", commonly called a Red Dwarf Jade Plant (not be confused by the enjoyable British classic television show Red Dwarf ).

My wife and step-daughter purchased a pot for the Red Dwarf Jade Plant and on Saturday I re-potted the Jade Plant into it's new pot:

Here is the Red Dwarf Jade in it's new pot:

We decided that our front entrance, that has a small table and two chairs, would be the best place to put the new Red Dwarf Jade Plant:

05-09-02024

Measuring and Watering Lemon Tree and Salvia Amistad

I am writing this blog post on my new iPad's Github App.

A few weeks ago my wife purchsed this Salvia Amistad to attract hummingbirds to our patio. Pictured below:

One of the features of the iPad is that it's camera can be used to measure objects. I tried using it on the lemon tree:

The weather has been great the past couple of days so I'm working on my patio garden for the summer. I will post another blog post on Saturday.

03-23-02024

Beginning of Lemons?

This weekend I continue to prune flowers from the lemon tree (seen below)

I noticed on some of the flowers that had lost their petals, a small yellow bud that I believe are the beginnings of the lemon fruits.

Here is one of the nascent fruits:

In this photo, you can see all of the phases of the lemon flowers; from the flower bud, to the flower, to two of the beginning lemons:

One of the great things about gardening is that this question will be answered as time passes and will resolve the hypothesis as evidence comes in (i.e. Lemon or not)

03-17-02024

Replanting Dracaena and Lemon Tree

It has been over six months since I wrote in this blog. I have found less garden-related material since we moved to Pacifica and our townhome's back patio doesn't have any soil for plants. However, over the weekend I re-potted a sick Dracaena into a new pot, changing out the soil because we believe one of the pets when we lived back in Colorado Springs had urinated on the tree. My lemon tree was still in the yellow plastic pot from the store so I decided to clean and re-use the Dracaena's pot and replant the Dracaena in a new pot. This photo is the work-in-progress (and I actually feel like a gardener!):

Here is the cleaned pot prior to re-planting the lemon tree:

After finishing transplanting Dracaena's new pot:

And finally, the new Lemon Tree in it's new pot (along with it's old pot)!

07-24-02023

San Pedro Hike

Where we live in Pacifica allows for a short walk to San Pedro Park . Yesterday, I walked the Old Trout Farm Trail and took the following photographs of the massive Tasmanian blue gum ( Eucalyptus globulus ) trees that surround the trail.

Also present are Redwoods pines and a lot of ferns in the undergrowth.

12-19-02022

Pacifica in December

With this being my first winter in Pacifica, I've observed a couple of things related to my ongoing gardening efforts (or lack thereof). The first is that although it never freezes (or hasn't yet) it still is cold at night with temperatures dropping into the 30s or 40s Fahrenheit. This past weekend we experienced sun but the previous couple of weeks we had rain every day. My sprouts are doing well with the moisture but I do need to clean the containers and keep emptying the bottom container. I also earlier in the month planted the remains of celery stalk and that seems to be doing well.

I've also been looking at the classes available at the local UC Extension office after reading an off-hand comment made in a recent blog post by Tyler Cowen on recent advances in LLM and in particular ChatGPT :

Currently the bots are much better at writing than say becoming a master gardener, which also requires skills of physical execution and moving in open space. We might thus see a great blossoming of talent in the area of gardening, and other hard to copy inputs, if only to protect one's reputation and IP from the bots. - Tyler Cowen Who gains and loses from the new AI?

While my gardening talent and skills are at best marginal (bad pun), I am interested in improving and learning more about how I can become better at both. Given that my space now is limited to a concrete slab and indoor plants, I feel like volunteering a community garden as part of certification process for a master gardener would be a good step (although reading about the requirements for the master gardener certification including background checks, seems a bit arduous).

11-19-02022

New Mung Bean Sprouts

Due to the rain we've had, the small sprout grower is actually growing sprouts in the various trays in the grow container! I snipped a few of the Mung Bean and Wheatgrass sprouts and after washing them, had a nice fresh little bite.

10-22-02022

Pacifica Walk

Living in a townhome community in Pacifica that borders running water, direct from my front-door a private sidewalk follows the stream through the complex. I took the following photos as an interested gardener.

I am hoping these mushrooms are Laetiporus sulphureus but they are communal resource and a very a real risk of being poisonous.

One of my neighbor has a large and aspiration citrus container tree:

My next plant purchase is going to be a citrus container tree of my own.

09-22-02022

A Pacifica First - Prepping the Sprouts Tray

I am no longer living in Colorado! My house, the principle place as a subject for this blog is to be sold on October 5th. I definitely have mixed feelings ☹ but I am so excited to be living less than 2 miles from Pacifica State Beach!!

We are renting a town-home with a concrete deck bordered by 8 foot-tall wooden fence. Because of import restrictions, I gave away my lemon tree (origin Florida) and other plants so I am definitely starting anew with a total container garden. One of the many great things living in this surprising sunny microclimate, is that I'll be able to garden year-around!

Expect more blog posts (and back fill the last posts from Colorado.

Attached to the patio is a small laundry room that I'm also using for my art projects and gardening supplies. Inspired by one my favorite writers, Om Malik , recent blog post Why (and how) of blogging , he quotes and links to Robin Rendle's Take Care of Your Blog , I'll continue writing and posting my photos and videos.

Tonight, I unpacked my sprouts grower appliance and prepped it with seeds while on the dryer, and put my first grow bed outside on the patio.

Here is the set-up:

• Mung Bean
• Wheatgrass
• Peas

05-21-02022

Snow in May

I took the following photo of our back-yard patio after today's late May snow-storm.

As typical of Colorado Springs weather, the previous weeks was beautiful with the false-promise of Spring. We need the moisture and I had to go to both the front and back to shake snow out of the trees otherwise they were at risk of breaking. My neighbor had significant damage to the pine tree in their front-yard. Most of the trees in Colorado Springs were planted after the town was founded in the late 1800s by General Palmer.

05-18-02022

Lavender and Bees

As has been my habit over the past couple of years, I captured the following bees pollinating the lavender bushes in the front yard. Wait until the end for a surprise visitor!

04-08-02022

Removal of Beds, prep for this Summer

My family and I are moving to the San Francisco Bay area this summer and my focus for gardening and landscaping efforts is on selling my house. Today I took off from work and tore out the front-yard mentioned here , here , here in 02020 and here , here in 02019.

The front-yard before:

Here is cleaned front-yard with the flower beds removed and the cleaned up bushes:

01-09-02022

Lemon Tree and a New Year

The new year brought mild temperatures during the day while still getting cold at night. We did have one snow storm last week in Colorado Springs with snow patches still remaining in the shade. The lemon tree (more like a lemon shrub) sole lemon approches full ripe so I'll be picking it soon.

10-05-02021

Fall/Failing Garden

Here is a photo I took of the frost-hit cherry tomato plant in a container:

:

As you can see, I failed to harvest the remaining tomatoes, which symbolizes my lack of effort on my garden over the summer. I didn't water the onion beds enough (you can't just garden over the weekends) with the resulting failure of any harvest-able onions. I'll just leave the blubs over the winter and hopefully in the spring, I'll do better job in 2022.

08-29-02021

Seed bombs on the Back Hill

My wife attended an environmental workshop at her employer and the participants were given "seed bombs" of native grasses and flowers. We decided to plant them in the Rose Bed/Onion Bed as the onions have wilted and died over the hot summer days with little mosture. Here is the seed bomb after we watered:

08-28-02021

Mowing the Front Yard

Even though the late summer has been hot and dry, the front yard lawn continues to grow, especially the weeds and other non-grass plants. I have been negligent in watering the front (and truth be told in the back onion-and-rose bed as well) but I decided to mow the front yard, it looks better now.

07-28-02021

Roses with Unexpected Guest

I took the following photo of the blooming rose along with a couple of other rose buds close to blooming.

When I looked at the image closely, I noticed that maybe a pincer beetle was also enjoying the fresh scent (or more likely the pollen) of the main rose.

07-12-02021

Deer in the Neighborhood

Walking this afternoon, I noticed this Whitetail deer in a near-by neighbor's yard. We have deer roam our neighborhood often but I liked the velvet covered new antlers of this particular buck.

06-13-02021

Bees in the Lavender Flowers

Short of pattern (i.e. on the way to becoming a habit and then tradition), I captured the bees in our lavender bushes out front.

06-10-02021

First Cherry Tomato of the Season

In my back-yard container garden, I harvest the first ripe (or nearly ripe) cherry tomato of the season. Just after picking this one:

05-29-02021

Stir-fry with Onion Greens

Augmenting Chinese take-out from the night before, I added kale, mushrooms, and carrots and began cooking them in my small wok. As I didn't have any onions available, I went outside and clipped some green stalks from the growing onions in the back onion bed. Here they are before chopping:

Here is the wok cooking with all of the vegetables:

05-22-02021

Weeding Onion Beds (and a photo-bomb by Teddy)

The onions are growing well over the past couple of weeks with almost daily rain showers. The onions aren't the only growth with the weeds starting to fill in the gaps and even in some cases displacing the young onions. As I was finishing up and taking a picture, our new kitten, Teddy, decided to hunt grasshoppers and you can see him about to lunge in the upper right of this photo:

05-01-02021

Mayday Planting Onions, Tomato, and Peppers

Today being the first of May and in solitary and celebration with all of the workers in the world that make our lives possible, I decided to finish planting the onions in the Rose beds. Early afternoon I went to my favorite Garden Center, Good Earth , and purchased two seedlings bundles of Walla Walla onions and planted them among the roses and the art we have in the back beds:

At Good Earth I also purchased a Fantastico cherry tomato plant for the container and two pepper plants I put into a pot you can see on the side:

04-25-02021

Onion Bed Planting

This afternoon I planted the onion bulbs I had picked up a few weeks ago, here is the bulb packet:

The package claimed that there were 100 bulbs, I didn't count them but I did plant the entire packet with each build about 4 inches from each other. The onions were planted in back roses bed which did have some leftover bulbs growing from previous years already.

03-06-02021

Planting Strawberries

A few days ago I was at a big box store had onions and strawberries starter bulbs and plants and I picked a bag of each. Although the weather is in 60s today here in Colorado, I am going to hold off on planting them until later this month. However, I decided I'm going to plan one of the strawberry plants in a pot just to see if I can get it started.

02-28-02021

Lemon Tree pH Test

A few months (or even a year or more), I purchased an analog pH testing probe that I've been meaning to start testing the soil for any of the container or potted plants. Today I decided to test the soil for the Lemon Tree and I looked up via an internet search, the ideal range of a potted lemon tree is between 5.5 and 6.5 pH. Testing the soil, I took a picture here:

Looking at the gauge, the soil is close to being neutral at 7, so I will look at adding a fertilizer to make the soil slightly more acidic. Left over from my stepdaughter's science project, I decided to use some mulch to make a layer in the Lemon tree because the roots are slightly showing and provide some protection and water retention. I am hoping that the lemon tree will flower again as it warms up and having extra nutrients available should help.

Next weekend my wife and I will harvest the lemon for some celebratory gin and tonics.

02-21-02021

Visiting Ricks and Starting New Sprouts

Yesterday I stopped by Rick's Garden Center just down the street from my house. My stepdaughter is doing a science project for her high school class and needed some mulch for one of her experiments. While I was there, I picked up three sprouting seed packets:

• Alfalfa Seeds
• Mung Bean
• Wheatgrass

I then cleaned the residuals sprouts and seeds from the sprout growing trays and I intend to start a new bunch of spouts tomorrow. I will also create two new seed bottles as I have the extra bottles.

01-30-02021

Lemon and Sprout Harvest with new Seeds

Almost at the end of January and although the weather varies between nice and snow, a single lemon from my Lemon tree is about ready to be picked.

I've already eaten the Alfalfa sprouts and I'm about to harvest the remaining along with the red clover sprouts. I have started recycling my plastic prescription bottles to store my seeds. Part of the conceit for my Bug-out Library is that will have a seed library. As these bottles become available, I cut-out the paper seed package and paste/glue the label to the bottles. Here are the latest:

01-09-02021

Sprouts Starting in the New Year

Today's snow started earlier in the day and continues. Before I left for Aikido class, I went out to the garage, picked up the sprouts trays from the garden grow hub, and watered them in the kitchen sink. Since I started back to work last Monday, I haven't been able to record the watering like I was intending in the Jupyter notebook but both the Alfalfa and the Red Clover seeds started sprouting.

The garage isn't heated and so the growth of the sprouts are stunted; however, I think the next purchase for the garden grow hub will be a heating mat. I took the following photo from the top and you can see the Alfalfa seeds starting to sprout.

The grow of new life (even with these sprouts) is an appropriate as I start the next year of my life.

12-26-02020

Seed Sprouter Notebook and Data

I started the over-night soak for both Red Clover and Alfalfa seeds that I'll transfer to the first layer in the Seed Sprouter I purchased earlier in the week. I started a Jupyter notebook to manage the data I'm collecting to track the full-growth cycle for sprouting seeds to harvesting for two different seeds. My plan is to start the second layer after the first of the year.

Here is the current set-up for the seeds being soaked in the Garden Grow hub:

12-22-02020

Garage Gardening Hub

Two new additions to the my garage indoor growing hub, mentioned earlier this year. Today shopping for holiday gifts at my favorite gardening nursery, Good Earth , I purchased a Seed Sprouter along with Red Clover and Alfalfa seeds to start growing sprouts in the upcoming year. More to come.

A few weeks ago I purchased a Landscape Drip watering system, seen at the bottom of the above photo. Using minimal parts from the entire kit, by the beginning of 02021, I'll be able to water any plant growth in the upper shelf of the hub.

12-16-02020

Lemon Tree Flowering

The container lemon tree started flowering again even though there is still one unripened lemon on the tree from the last (and only) harvest. This time I'll try to keep more than one lemon resulting from these flowers. The weather in Colorado Springs is cold with some sporadic snow that makes gardening during warmer times seem like a pleasant dream.

Here is the best cluster of flowers from the lemon tree. Notice in the top-left corner, a leaf that some insect snacked from this summer when the lemon tree was outside:

11-07-02020

Raking Leaves and Pruning Lavender

With projected rain and snow in the forecast, I decided to do some yard work in the front starting with raking the leaves and removing the dead lavender stalks from the plants.

10-18-02020

Container Garden Moving Indoors

The temperature in Colorado Springs definitely dropping over the past few days. Friday night my wife and I moved the temperate container plants indoors with the lemon tree moving underneath the existing coffee table growing station.

The Denver Bronco's win coupled with progress on various local art projects makes today enjoyable despite the cold weather, the continuing Covid-19 pandemic, and the unusually stress of 2020 elections. My garage growing station needs improvement to grow any winter fresh vegetables. At least improve the frequency of my winter blog posts!

09-26-02020

Maize Growing in Front Garden

During the hot summer days of July, on a whim I planted some sweet maize (corn) in the front yard and now at the end of September, it has grown about a foot with no chance that will grow large enough to harvest any food.

This entire growing season has been a failure, with none of the celery, onions, lettuce, or tomatoes maturing enough for any harvest (I take that back, I was able to harvest some lettuce for hamburgers one evening)

09-07-02020

Preparing for First Freeze

Right now the temperature is in the high eighties with the air dense from the wild fires in Colorado and beyond. The weather is forecast to drastically change overnight and into tomorrow with the low being below freezing with snow and rain! I'll be bringing inside the container garden for the night although I hope to move them back outside at lease until the end of the month and maybe into October.

09-05-02020

Weeding with Hari Hari

Using my new hari hari Japanese gardening knife (actually made in China), I weeded the front-yard's stone beds. I love the point and handling of the hari hari and when I came across this black and orange spider, I took the following photo with the blade:

08-28-02020

Repotting House Tree

My brother Jacob gave my wife and I for our wedding a tree house-plant that is now part of my container garden. I've been remiss and although I purchased a nice pot a couple of years for the plant, up until today I just kept in it's original black plastic container. Here is the tree plant (please email if you know the name) in it's new ceramic pot:

08-08-02020

Prickly Pear Cactus and Silver Sage

A large lot north on 19th has been abandoned for a while with an established forest. I think the lot has been sold along with the adjacent house so I wanted to save at least a couple of plants before it is developed into houses, condos, or apartments (best scenario).

This morning I took my new Chinese-made Hori hori and three black cast-off soil containers to put two Prickly Pear or Opuntia plants along with a nearby sunflower or Artemisia cana .

This is photo is when I was digging out the first prickly pear (the Artemsisia cana was only a meter or two away) with the Hori hori with it's orange handle stuck in the ground.

I quickly discovered that my gloves didn't protect my hands from the very tiny spines and for the reminder of the day I have removing the spines with tweezers from my fingers.

When I got back to the house, I discover one of the two prickly pear cactus had white film on the underside that looked like bird guano but I don't think it was. I first planted the Artemsisa cana in it's own pot and my wife took a photo of me at around that time below:

After finishing planting both the cactus and the silver sagebrush, I made a short video of my container garden, with my lemon tree, my new plants, and the seasonal cabbage and tomato plant:

08-01-02020

Lemon Tree First Yellow Fruit and Rosemary Bush

This morning when practicing Tai Chi on the back patio, I looked over to the lemon tree and saw this beautiful sight:

Of the four lemons, the first turning yellow is one of the smallest. I am excited that one of my favorite plants is producing fruit. For the first year, the four fruit are exciting to see.

I dropped off Carmen at her work and on the way back I stopped off at my favorite garden center, Good Earth and purchased a couple of pots for a project I'm starting and I also was able to purchase a small Rosemary plant below:

07-18-02020

Celery Garden Scrap Transplant

This is my third or forth attempt and growing out from the stalk of celery a new transplant. The previous attempts all failed with the celery transplants dying when I planted them in the back-yard onions and roses bed. This time I am taking a different approach and planting the celery transplant in the the front-yard next to the flower beds.

I hope with the full sun and watering, that this attempt will be more successful than my past attempts. I will also grow another celery transplant from my next store purchase of celery stalks for the family meals.

07-03-02020

Stella d'Oro

In the front-yard flower bed closest to the street, the mystery flower has finally bloomed with a couple of bright yellow flowers. My wife texted my mother-in-law with a photo who identified the plant as a Stella d'Oro or yellow day lily.

The rain this afternoon and early evening is beaded on the leaves in this photo of the Stella d'Oro:

06-13-02020

Tomato, Lettuce, and Red Cabbage

I went to the Phelan Gardens after Aikido class today (our first since March) where we practiced social distancing Aiki warm-up and 7-bokken suburi. Before and after class we washed the mat with a water-bleach solutions. I purchased a tomato, four red cabbage, and a lettuce selection. The tomato and two of the red cabbages I planted in the cherry tomato container from last year. The lettuce and two of the red cabbages I planted in the container.

Here is a photo of new tomato plant:

06-07-02020

Structural Onions, Lemon Tree, and other Additions

For the past few months I've growing out celery stalks from the leftover marketplace celery I base a lot of my cooking savory meals around especially during the Covid-19 self-isolation and restaurants closures these past few months. My first attempt grew out and then died back finally shriveling up and dying when transplanted into the orange rectangular container.

My second celery attempt started a couple of weeks ago and is to the (healthy) I hope the new celery stalk is ready for replanting in the backyard's Onions and Roses bed. The celery stalk is in a small glass jar seen between the legs of easel (currently my third painting in the Floyd's Dreams of Dylan painting and pirate radio series in the photo below of my garage biological grow hub and my oil painting studio:

Bamboo Structural Support for Onions

With the onions in their second year, a couple of these have recently been flattened by human or other means. In one of the kitchen drawers, we have bamboo skewers that I repurposed into structural supports for these fallen onions tied with kite string as seen in this photo:

Horizontal Art, Lemon Tree, Roses, Onions, and Celery

With both my wife and I working from home we both frequently look out into the back-yard and so now in the bed we have our ceramic art fetish, my lemon tree (moved outdoors for the summer from inside the house), the newly supported onion, followed with the orange and green steel cactus art, with another onion and newly planted celery plant, all pictured from left-to-right in this photo from today:

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I just love how both the front have improved tremendously under my wife and step-daughters efforts over the past couple of months.

05-22-02020

Butterflies and Bees

The lavender bushes in the front-yard are starting to bloom with butterflies and bees busy pollinating as seen in this video I took today:

This is inspiring to see and a welcome sight. I've decided I'll be joining my wife for a 30 minute daily gardening session starting next Tuesday. I hope that my writing output on this blog will increasing accordingly for the 2020 summer of the Covid-19 pandemic.

05-07-02020

Front Flower Beds

My wife and step-daughters stopped by Rick's Garden Center last night and picked up an assortment of flowers and bushes for the two flower beds in the front-yard. In each of the beds there is a Little Turdy Catmint ( Nepta psfike ) and a Gold Star Potentillas ( Potentilla fruticosa ) plants. Tonight I planted both of the beds. In the Southern most flower bed that closet to street and receives the most sun, we planted a Rocket City Daylily Hemerocallis and Ruby Stella Hemerocallis . In between these bushes we planted clusters of Ocean Breeze and Harvest Mix Violoas:

After I planted the second Catmint plant with the purple flowers, two bumblebees almost immediately came and started feeding which you can see in this photo:

Here is that bed with a new Plantain Lily Hosta that reminds me of Illinois.

In all an unexpected but wonderful mid-week gardening opportunity on this fine Colorado Spring evening.

05-02-02020

Weeding the Front and Back Yards

My wife is doing her DBA program from home this weekend due to the Covid-19 pandemic instead of traveling to Whitewater, Wisconsin this weekend. In the morning I weeded the dandelions in the front yard and noticed that the lavender bushes are starting to bud and should be flowering soon. In the picture below you can see at the corner of the sidewalk there is my basket of weeds next to a new sage bush growing between lavender

In the backyard, I weeded the entire Onions and Roses bed and took this photo showing the onions, roses, the Fetish Art Drop, and two steel flower decorations that is pictured here:

04-30-02020

Watering the Onions and Roses

Late this afternoon-to-early-evening, I decided to water the onion beds and roses as the ground is getting dryer (not unrelated to the current emerging megadrought ) here in Colorado. In the picture below, you can see the art work, the line of onions with sprayed water.

04-19-02020

Yard work and weeding

This weekend my wife, step-daughters, and I worked in both the front and backyards cleaning, picking weeds, and general yard chores on Saturday and Sunday. The weather was nice both mornings with increasing cloudy weather starting in the afternoon. My wife focused on the clipping the dead grasses back to the green growth. She then used our electric leaf blower for the first time and blew out the leaves in our front-yard rock beds and the bushes into the street and our driveway. My stepdaughters Meghan and Carmen swept up the leaves, dirt, and dust into our trash can. On Sunday, they both picked up rocks as we started cleaning some of the rock beds in the back yard.

I picked dandelions in the front yard and I kept and cleaned the young dandelion greens for an early spring salad that I had for a late lunch today. I also added some of the microgreens that were close to the correct size from my indoor grow station. There a few more seeds starting to come up and I hoping with the forecasted warmer weather for the next week that I'll have more seeds sprouting. I am going to wait until the second or third of week of May before relocating the seeds into the rose beds or into their separate outdoor containers for the upcoming season. I had started growing a celery stalk from kitchen scraps and I'll probably move it to a garden container first or take the plunge and plant it in the roses and onion beds. One good note is that onions continue to grow from last season and as long as we continue to water it when dry, I am hoping for a mid-summer harvest of onions.

04-05-02020

Installing Garden Art among the Roses

Today one my jobs was to install a piece of garden art I was able to pick for the Texas 2019 Christmas white elephant gift exchange with my wife's family. Initially, I had installed the ceramic rain-drop inverted but after asking my wife to confirm, I fixed and she took the following photo this afternoon:

03-23-02020

Cleaning up Lavender Beds

This morning I worked in the front yard cleaning up the lavender beds by removing leaves and the old stems. Here is the yard before the clean-up (along with our black cat Rocky crossing in the background):

Removing the dead stems and leaves took some time and even then there still needs to be another round of leave clean-up as seen in this after photo:

03-16-02020

Seed Grow Station

After being inspired last Thursday , I started my indoors seed starting station and went ahead and created three of the egg carton seed packs. I also planted a micro-greens pot and in another pot planted one of the onion bulbs from last year. Some of the last year's seed pods were re-hydrated and planted some of the remaining beans and squash seeds.

In the photo below, the egg carton seed cartons in the black trey are from front to the back:

• The three sisters - corn, green beans, and zucchini
• Tomatoes from the super successful cherry tomato plant from last season and pumpkin seeds from last fall, and some beets seeds from Ann Grant Martin
• Arugula, Kale, and Spinach

The two brown bottles hold water and in the lower-left corner there is a couple of my paint brushes (my easel is adjunct to the grow station) are in jar with paint thinner. Because of the COVID-19 virus imposed social distancing, all of my family is staying at home. Being able to start on the cultivating seedlings for this season's garden provides a much needed balance and connection to the larger reality beyond the fear of the ongoing pandemic.

03-12-02020

Onions in Early March

Last fall I didn't harvest very many onions that were the Rose bed because most of them have died or so I assumed from the lack of green tips. Last week I noticed as the weather in Colorado Springs has improved, that some of those abandoned onions are sprouting back up with the most prominent pictured below:

Last weekend I put on my todo list to start the seedlings for planting this spring and I always seem to have an excuse. I need to get the light fixed and most of the first two trays planted, perferrable this afternoon. This year I am using cardboard egg cartons for containers to hold the seeds. The added advantage is that I can use a pen to mark what is where.

My immediate goal is the create a three-sisters planting on a single six-egg carton and then tranport them to the very successful cherry tomato planter from the last year. I am curious to see if the container is too constraining for the corn or if all three plants (the other two being beans and squash) can survive as a well.

It would be nice if I could cultivate the three-sisters in this manner.

02-13-02020

Re-potting the Lemon Tree

I think the size of the pot for my new lemon tree was too small and too much of the root crown was exposed. I had an extra plastic container that moved the lemon tree into that does a better job of covering the roots and gives the tree more room to grown. In the small window of sun shine during the 20 degree Fahrenheit day, I replanted and took this photo (I wish it was warm as it looks, the sun in Colorado is always deceptive during the winter)

The bottom of the lemon tree's container has a reservoir to store extra water so I hope that will help reduce the occurrence of all of the soil being dried up that was part of the issue with the smaller terracotta pot.

01-15-02020

California Dreaming

For my first blog post of 2020 (and it being winter here in Colorado Springs) I decided to replant a lemon tree I purchased late last year into it's own pot.

When I am in Palo Alto, my cube on the Lanthrop third floor looks into a courtyard that contains lemons and kumquats in planters. When I was there last week, the lemons were starting to ripen. These lemons are delicious and so inspired me to buy and try to keep living my lemon tree. I did notice that the pot I picked is about the same size and container I purchased with the roots being container bound. I'll likely need to purchase a larger pot this summer.

12-31-02019

Final Thoughts for 2019

As the last day of 2019, my garden adventures for the year are complete with very mixed results. I killed too many plants and here , I failed in both planting seedlings and from most of onions I planted int the ground. My notable successes were with container plants, both onions and the cherry tomato plant. I did a lot of weeding and bush removals along with other gardening work around the house. In all, even though most of my ambitions was folly, documenting my experiences in this blog and spending time gardening was a source of deep satisfaction and humbling of my initial hubris.

2020 New Year Garden Resolutions

Looking over the past year, here are my gardening goals for the new year:

• Start seedlings sooner, allow them to grow larger before planting in the ground and in containers
• More of mix between in-ground plantings and container gardening
• Plant less perennials
• Start a drip irrigation system for at one of the new beds

10-27-02019

Harvesting Container Onions

The weather forecast for Colorado Springs is snow for the next couple of days so I decided to harvest three of the onions in the long container before the snow starts coming down. I picked the three and noticed although the size of the onions where not great, the length of the roots was significant and think the long rectangular box was too shallow for the deep rooted onions for next season's garden. Here are the three onions freshly picked with the rich soil still attached:

After cleaning the onions, I decided to keep one of the larger onions with the most roots out to plant in my internal winter garden in a deeper pot but I chopped up the small onion and the other larger one in a pan with carrots that eventually became the base for the bean soup for Sunday's dinner:

This is after all the ultimate goal for my gardening efforts this year and for this blog was to at least to supplement the diet of myself and my family going into the winter.

10-09-02019

Growing season Wind Down

The latest weather forecast for Colorado Springs calls for snow and drastically reduced high temperature in 30s Fahrenheit. I decided to move the one remaining tomato plant indoors and see if I can keep the plant alive as long as possible in my portable grow station. This cherry tomato plant has been the most productive plant in this season's garden adventures and it will be an interesting experiment to see how long this plant lives indoors. I decided to hold off in harvesting the remaining onions in the rose bed and in the long container.

09-22-02019

Back from Sweden; Tomatoes and Garden Center

Last week I was in Stockholm at the National Library for a conference where I presented on two different panels related to my work as software engineer. Before I left, I thought I gave instructions for watering the cherry tomato plant that is now in the backyard. This morning I harvested three tomatoes and picked up about five or six ripe tomatoes from the ground that I've moved indoors. I am going to try to get them to grow over the winter or at least be able to harvest the seeds for next spring.

My favorite garden center sent me an email with a number of coupons that have induced me to go there after the Denver Broncos game (an expected loss to Green Bay given how they've been suffering from three turnovers and no sacks or takeaways). I purchased a stone pot to replant a Ficus house plant my brother gave my and wife last summer for our wedding. I like how it looks:

09-10-02019

Removing Cinquefoil Bushes and Digital Timer

A couple of days ago, after prompting from my wife, I went and finally removed the dried out Cinquefoil bushes we had planted earlier in the summer . I noticed the root ball of all but one bush were root bound and still in the same of the plastic pots they came in. My best guess is that we really need to water and continue to water any new bushes or other plants we attempt on the hill next year. Here is an example of the one of the smaller Cinquefoil bushes on the sidewalk:

In a less depressing topic, I found doing a web search the manual for the Workchoice WC2011 Digital Timer that I used last winter and spring to grow the three sister seedlings that never grew when I replanted them into the backyard onion and rose bed. Now that the weather is starting to get cooler, I want to start again and see if I can get a small indoor garden space going again for fall, winter, and next spring.

08-28-02019

Water and Tree Removal

I watered the front cherry tomato plant in the front year this afternoon.

Growing with the front bushes were two larger upshoots from tree stumps I had cut down in previous years.

Before

After

Of course, since I haven't dug up these small stumps, next year I'll likely have to trim the saplings again in this location.

08-26-02019

White-tail ( Odocoileus virgininus ) Life-cycle

This afternoon I took Foxy, our chow mix, for a walk down our street and a young fawn was spooked out of one of the Northeast neighbor's yard and stop to watch us. I took this photo of our encounter:

The fawn bounded off with Foxy and I continue walking down the street. We then broke off and followed a path through a still wild field where as looked at these flowering bushes and grasses, I thought of how it may look in my backyard hill after our disaster of planting this spring and summer. Here is the trail we were following:

As I was thinking about how with gardens we try to enforce our values, our vision, onto the land, these flowering plants reflect a baseline that I need to do a better job of observing and integrating into my labor in the yards of my house and community. I like that I don't have a back fence along my properties and the hill is wild with often visits from deer eating along the ridge.

Funny enough, when I got back home and went out back there was a magnificent buck resting at the top of my property line pictured in silhouette pictured here:

08-18-02019

Watering Onions and Roses

The past few days in Colorado Springs have been dry with hot days. Today I watered the onions in the backyard roses and onion bed:

. I selectively watered the remaining onions using a plastic bucket. As I went back and forth filling the bucket with house water, I remembered reading the news reports about It is raining plastic about microplastics found in 90% of the samples of rain water in Denver and Boulder. I wonder how my practices in the garden, like using a plastic bucket for watering, are contributing to microplastic pollution in Colorado Springs?

08-10-02019

Onions and Roses, Purple Fungus, and Cherry Tomatoes

When I got home from Aikido practice, I started weeding the back, in, what I got a little chuckle in the bad pun Onions and Roses rock band,
main growing bed in the back-yard. As I was removing the morning glories vines from the bed as they crowd out the onions, in the photo below you can the row of onions are next to stone wall on the right with the roses on the left.

When I was removing these vines, I thought of my role in the garden as the fitness function of these adaptive systems of grow plants. My intention in removing unwanted plants is improve the environment for the plants that I want to thrive and succeed. But, I was looking at these particular morning glory vines and how resilient and tough these plants are, I wonder for the 2020 growing season that I plant and start early climbing peas in the same areas and try to grow them as a replacement in the niche currently being exploited to great effect by these climbing vines.

Purple Fungus

Since 2013, my first spring and summer in this house, I have notices this purple fungus on many of the weeds in both the front and back. On the south side of the house (what I'm now going to start call Strawberry Row, as the strawberry plants there are doing well) there was a particularly bad patch I took the following photo of one plant with leaves in various stages of infection:

I am not sure what this fungus does or is called but since it seems to only infect (so far as I can tell) common weeds that I would have normally picked anyways). I was able figure it out in 5 minutes of web research but I'll continue to look into this. In the meantime, when I pick these infected weeds I'm isolating them from my two compost bins and my plan is to burn them once they dry out.

Cherry Tomatoes

So my cherry tomato plant impulse buy started producing and ripening small tomatoes that I have started picking and eating once ripe! here is a close shot of a ripe tomato on that plant that I also took today:

08-04-02019

Removing Dead Bushes, Weeding, and Watering

For the past couple of weeks I've either been out-of-town (last week at this time I was finishing up a 5-day Aikido Summer Camp in the Rockies at Boulder Aikikai ) or haven't done much gardening other than weeding and watering the onion bed and the new tomato plant.

The four bushes my wife purchased earlier in the summer are all dried up and look died. I'm not sure if was the lack of watering initially or for some other reason, one problem with the bushes location on the backyard hill is that water retention isn't great. When I went up the hill today to look at the four bushes, I noticed green leaves sprouting on a couple of the branches in one of the bushes picture below.

The next time we plant a bush or tree on the hill we should look at using
drip irrigation to ensure a consistent supply of water. Disappointing for sure.

07-16-02019

Onion Bed Weeding and new Cherry Tomato Container

During my lunch 1/2 hour today, I briefly went through and weeded the onion bed in the back yard. Most of the weeds are off-shoots of the climbing vine that has a mass of roots through-out the bed. I imagine as an underground network spreading out and finding its way for any opportunity to burst through a weak spot or sunny location in the onion bed to send up a quick growing shoot.

This weekend in a fit of consumer loss of will-power, I purchased a large cherry tomato plant within it's own container that I have put in the front sidewalk, pictured here:

07-02-02019

Red and Yellow Roses (on the same bush)

The second largest rose bush in the back garden recently bloomed. In the past and up until recently, all of the Roses in the back-yard were red.

A couple of days ago, a yellow rose appeared and here is photo of the usual red roses in the upper-left with the new yellow rose in the lower right.

06-28-02019

Back from Trip & Weeding

Late Wednesday night I flew back to Denver and then took the shuttle from DIA to the Antlers Hotel in Colorado Springs. Yesterday I spent the day mostly in bed recovering from a summer chest cold (still not 100%) but today I was able to do some weeding in the onion bed.

Feeling the warmth and brightness of the sun on my face, I hope when I'm recovering from a future illness I'll be able to garden a bit.

06-16-02019

Yew Bushes Trimming & Bees in the Lavender

This morning and afternoon started with picking weeds in the both the backyard onion patch and in the lawn before I mowed. I then shot the following video of bees and flies pollinating
the lavender bushes in the front:

Later in the afternoon, I went back to trimming a yew bushes in the front. Under the bushes is a rock border that I wanted to reveal that was over-grown. I cut them back as seen in this photo:

06-07-02019

Front-yard Flower Beds

Yesterday, my wife Melissa went to a large retail tool and garden center and purchased a number of flowers for the front-yard. The red geraniums and yellow lilies really stand-out surrounded by the lavender bushes.

05-19-02019

Third "Three" Sisters Planting

None of the initial "three" sisters planting of corn, eggplant, and green beans came up and since I have initial seedlings ready for planting, I decided to replant the available seedlings in the same location as the initial seedlings. I also and weeded the front-yard and along the side of the house leading up to the second strawberry patch .

05-14-02019

Strawberry Patch Two

Sunday I arrived back from a professional conference in Boston and yesterday as I was looking at the first Strawberry patch on the enclosed side of the house, I noticed a ripe strawberry that I picked and enjoyed just a taste of the hopefully, more to come in the upcoming years. On the opposite side of the house is a second patch strawberry patch on side of the hill pictured below:

05-03-02019

Second Sisters Planting

The weather this past week in Colorado Springs ranged from snow to rain until today with the sun provided an opportunity to go outside and engage the garden.

Earlier in the spring I started a seed starter grow station in my garage that provide the source seeds in my first foray into a three sister's planting. Starting withe the seedlings with the most growth pictured here:

A closer grouping of the seedlings to plant:

Here are the seedlings near the final position in the garden patch before being planted this afternoon:

Here is the final planting using soil from the existing compost augmented with some dirt from a purchased bag of garden soil:

04-28-02019

New Compost Bag, Onion and Roses Bed

Yesterday I went to my new favorite garden-center and purchased a " compost sak " for the front yard. This morning I set-up the sack and placed next to the gate to the backyard (see the photo below) I picked up the remaining cuttings from my trimming the yew bushes in the front as well as a round of weeding the front yard.

Later in the afternoon, I weeded and watered the onion and rose bed which you see in the second photo below. Also, you can start to get a sense of the hill in the backyard as well.

I should confess that an important source of inspiration is watching through Monty Don series on Netflix, with my wife and I watching the second episode in the French gardens series. Today I first heard the French style of kitchen garden, or portage, from the French word for soup, were herbs, fruits, vegetables, and flowers are all combined into an integrated whole with the focus on the vegetables. Just a quick internet search turned up two articles, Learn to How to Create a Potager: A French Kitchen Garden and How to Design a Potager Garden .

04-23-02019

Weeding Dandelions

The rain of the past two days in Colorado Springs resulted in a number of dandelions popping up in the front-yard. Between meetings this afternoon, I picked a few and then took the first photo of my weeding tools and bucket, along with the largest patch of these "weeds". Most weeds I don't have any qualms about removing them from the front lawn or in the various garden beds but I am ambivalent about dandelions because, unlike many of the weeds, they are edible and I feel like instead of composting them, I should clean and prep them for a meal.

I also came across this multi-colored, that I believe is a pansy that grew from seed as a part of last year's pansies in the front-yard beds.

04-21-02019

Berry Hedge Beginnings

My stepdaughter Meghan and I planted a few weeks three berry bushes, a red raspberry, a black raspberry, and a blackberry bushes at the top of my Pike Peak's foothill backyard. As seen in the photo below, I labeled each of the new bushes with an unique IRI built using the EFF's dice word-list to generate random three-word phrases as names instead of me trying to come up with new names and ids for the plants I want to track.

04-20-02019

Initial Garden Reflections

Starting today, I write to reflect on today's work in my garden, located on the Westside of Colorado Springs. Most of my backyard is the side of a foothill that with it's siblings, merges west into Pikes Peak.

My current work is in a rose garden that over the past years I've lived here, I've routated between the roses, loosely-called compost pits. Finally this year, I'm actually planting both onions and three sisters of first nation origin.