Yes, it's been five short years since we bought our New House, and that got me to wondering if I should still refer to our New House as such. Perhaps it's time for a change: our Awesome House? our Wonderful House? our Rescued-From-Inept-Previous-Owners House? our House? our Great House? our Blue House? our House O' Many Cats? our House Of Four Gables? Whatever I decide upon, it should be short and easy to type - ideally no more than a one-syllable adjective, such as I have been using. What do y'all think? Maybe I'll experiment with various house monikers as I type up this exciting Episode. The title, however, will not change - the Episodes will still be titled as New House Blog: etc...
We had 45 Episode that first year of being New House owners, and that was only from May to December. In the following years the number of Episodes has declined, as has the frequency of posting, but the New House Blog continues steadily on. In this Episode we discuss our annual spring plantings, a brief note regarding a new self-imposed water leak, an encounter with a legendary spider, and a cute cat picture.
But first a brief update on a couple of fruit trees. In the
previous Episode we had to prune the pear tree because of fire blight. Well, we recently had to do a second, more intense, round of pruning due to a new fire blight outbreak. Our nectarine tree is also suffering from a blight - leaf curl. We noticed it too late for treatment to be effective this season, but we can treat it in the fall to prevent a recurrence next spring. Fortunately, the actual nectarines are unaffected.
Spring Planting 1: Edibles
Let's start things off with our annual spring planting. I know it's June now, but it's still spring, and we planted the new plants a few weeks before today, so it still counts as spring plantings. Not everything was planted at once, but I'm going to divide our plantings into their garden groups and not the actual chronological order of plantings. First up is our food garden.
Every year we plant a food garden, but this year we have decided to cut back a bit and focus on only a few vegetables and/or fruits. We currently have one cucumber plant, some strawberry and hula berry plants, and some catnip in the food garden. We have started various varieties of honeydew (from seeds) in pots, and we will be transplanting them into the food garden when they have matured a bit.
This is the food garden as it currently sits. The large mass of leaves on the left consists of various strawberry and hula berry vines. The persian cucumber is in the lower right of the frame. Note also the catnip.
These pots contain our various varieties of honedew, grown from seeds.
Next in line is our pottery garden, which contains the usual assortment of peppers and herbs. There's no photo of the pottery garden, but it looks pretty much the same as it did last year at this time.
We now move on to what I have begun to call Berry Row. We added two loganberry seedlings to Berry Row, between the raspberries and the geraniums.
Our two loganberry plants are thriving. In addition to providing delicious loganberries, they should also provide some shade for the cyclamens, which are not happy with our full California summer sun.
Berry Row. From top to bottom: catnip, blueberries, pink lemonade blueberries, geraniums, loganberries, and raspberries.
Spring Planting 2: Cactus
We have added our usual two new cactus plants to our expanding cactus garden.
The first is known as Indian Corn Cob (Euphorbia Mammiliaris Variegata).
The second new cactus is called the Apple Cactus (Cereus Peruvianus).
Here you can see the two new cactus in context.
Spring Planting 3: Succulents
I hereby declare that the succulent garden is finally and officially full. We recently filled the remaining nooks and crannies, and now there is simply no more room in our succulent garden for new plants.
First up, replacing our stomped-on-by-painters blue finger plant, is this Spear Head Senecio (Senecio Kleinilformis). Like some of our other succulents, the spear head is native to South Africa.
Filling a small vacancy is this Key Lime Pie (Adromischus Cristatus). This is another South African native.
Next up we have this Kalanchoe Longiflora Coccinea (Kalanchoe Longiflora Coccinea). This one is native to Natal.
And here is the final addition to the succulent garden (unless something doesn't survive) - the Dragon's Blood (Sedum Spurium), chosen partly because of its cool name. This is one of my favourites, and it replaces a voodoo plant stalk that grew to about 4' tall then slowly died. The rest of the voodoo plant is fine, but the dead stalk left a hole that we were obliged to fill. Once again, the succulent garden is officially full.
Spring Planting 4: Non-Garden
When we moved into our Beautiful House there was a large bladed plant by the front door. We never bothered to learn its name, but it began to bother me this year, so we pulled it out and replaced it with a Scarlet Flame (Callistemon V. Scarlet Flame).
You can see the old plant to the left of the front door. It was just kind of there, we never watered it, and it kept dropping seeds that would sprout and have to be removed.
Here is the new scarlet flame plant, also to the left of the front door.
Up close you can better see the red blooms that give it its name. We do water this one. With this planting we have pretty much replaced every single plant in front of our Verdant House. We have not, however, replaced the giant redwood in the front yard.
Spring Planting 5: Fruit Tree
In what may be becoming an annual tradition, we planted a new fruit tree - an Arctic Supreme White Peach tee, and this planting led to another Arboreal House project, which we can mostly blame on the pre-Bishopians.
While digging the gigantic hole for our new peach tree we encountered this unexpected greenish/grayish pvc pipe. We had already picked the spot for planting, and put some effort into digging the hole, so we weren't going to give up this spot easily. We excavated a little and discovered that the pipe was already broken and empty, so it was safe to remove.
And this is what lead to the other project, which will be covered in detail in another Episode. While excavating along the length of this extraneous, enigmatic, oddly-coloured pipe we accidentally punctured a live water pipe, which caused minor flooding of the hole before we could activate the appropriate shutoff valve. The punctured pipe leads to the hose outlet by our food garden, so the direct impact of the damage was minor.
As you can see, the total length of this random pipe is not great, but its position was annoying, and its presence led to extra picking, digging, and a small project that turned into a larger project. Those pre-Bishopians: you think you're finally free of their ineptness, then you come across something like this. Grrr....
Anyway, despite the best efforts of the pre-Bishopians we successfully planted our new peach tree. It has a few small peaches already, so we hope for a harvest this year.
Our new peach tree in context. As you can see, the apricot tree has really flourished - it was about the same size as the peach tree when we planted it in 2014.
Legendary Spider Encounter
And now for my nighttime encounters, and battles, with a spider of legend. If you are squeamish you may want to skip this section. It was nighttime, of course, on a Thursday. I had rolled the wheelbarrow into the back yard so I could take a load of pruned pear branches out to the street for the city to collect the following morning. I was approaching the pear tree on one of our paver paths, and I recoiled suddenly, spun around in a circle, and set the wheelbarrow down across the path - all of this was one motion, and it happened purely by instinct, before my conscious mind had processed what was happening. When my brain caught up to my instincts I realized with some alarm that I had nearly walked into the biggest spiderweb I have ever seen at our Anti-Spider House. And in the middle of this gigantic tree-to-ground web was the giant, legendary spider Shelob. Yes folks, if you've ever wondered where she ran off to after being stabbed by Sting, wonder no more - she made her way to our Fruitful House.
This was a truly massive web, and a truly massive spider. The pictures don't adequately show her colors, but I believe she was some variety of orb weaver.
Here's a photo from the other side of the web that should give a little more scale and perspective. After taking some photos I decided to knock down the web and eliminate Shelob.
Shelob, however, did not relish so much attention and light, so she retreated into the pear tree, where her grayish coloring allowed her to blend in nicely. I knew she was only hiding, so for the next couple of days after the initial encounter (and knocking down of her web of course) both Becky and I were vigilant in looking up into the pear tree when walking beneath it, and in looking for more webs.
One night I decided to go out and look for a new web construction, and I found her in mid-construction. Shelob must have recognized me for the great spider vanquisher that I am, because she beat a hasty retreat, as you can see in this photo. I knocked down the new web and searched the tree for her. This time her coloring did not sufficiently blend in to the tree's coloring, and I spotted her on a low limb of our pear tree. I hastened inside to retrieve my trusty fly swatter, and then I returned to the tree, and in a single thwack ended the life of Shelob, the evil spider of legend.
Cute Cat Ending
Let's wrap this up on a happy note with a cute cat picture.
Happy 5th House Anniversary!
bIsh
