And it’s back to the garden for 2012

And yes, hello again all — been a few months on the blog here but life’s been full!  Anyway, yesterday our bunch got everything ready for a new growing year and as ever I had to make a video about it…

Some photos from a visit to Rancho Los Alamitos

So the other day a small group of us that like to do what our main instigator calls ‘excursions’ to local areas of interest went to see Rancho Los Alamitos, found in Long Beach. I’ve enjoyed doing this because it’s a good way to help you realize what can be around just under your nose; we’ve visited various local museums and other spots of interest as we’ve gone.

The product of a combination of Spanish colonial settling and eventual Mexican and American commercial interests, the complex was deeded over to the city of Long Beach by the Bixby family, one of the major players in the history of the area for the past hundred years (ranching, oil, real estate — the California non-tech/entertainment trifecta, right there). I didn’t really take any photos of the complex itself, but in wandering the gardens with everyone a few sights caught my eye so I put the iPhone through its paces. All shots here, a small set, but a couple of favorites:

This last is actually on its side rather than the proper orientation — it’s a closeup of a palm tree with an ivy-like plant growing up it — but I like the way it looks here.

The garden on December 10, 2010

A little late, obviously, but just getting this out there for now! A brief but fun visit as we got ready for winter planting:

And just two photos this time, but great ones:

The garden on August 20, 2010

And back to the garden we go — or at least I go. Another lovely Friday afternoon:

Plus, of course, more photos:

The garden on July 23, 2010

And after a two week break, back for a visit — most of my fellow gardening crew were either away on their own vacations or in town but busy with family visits so it was all up to me this time. We’ve had some cool mornings but warm afternoons — a nice balance! — but it did mean some needed watering. Didn’t have a chance to do some proper cleanup and trimming but there were a slew of tomatoes to take, so I’ll make a cold soup of some sort, I figure!

But first, the latest video:

Next, a selection from the rolling photo set of some of the photos from today — and I’d like to feature what’s become one of the hits, the shisho, also known as perilla. After a slow start it’s completely exploded — took a number of leaves and am going to see what I can do with them over the weekend, as apparently they are best used when fresh.

Some other photos here — good growing days all around:

The garden on June 4, 2010

And so it continues — but this will be the last full garden update for a month due to my various travels and plans for June! So enjoy where we’re at here with this video:

And as ever the Flickr set contains more updates:

Back to the garden for 2010

The garden’s been happily ticking over during winter but I haven’t had a chance to go out there with other folks until these last couple of weeks. So here’s the first video of the year from there:

While a new photo set has been created for additions as they come along. A couple of samples:

And a garden update — and mostly to do with bark

Which may seem strange. But while the photos don’t entirely tell the tale — as always, the rolling photo set has more shots in general — today was actually a very important day at the garden, a long-planned work day to lay down plastic sheeting (via old garbage bags and the like) as a barrier to weeds. This was done in the other garden area already (at the top of the photo above) and was a massive success at keeping weeds mostly out and away from the area, aside from a couple of unavoidable spots on the periphery.

By doing this here as well, along with laying down a lot of new bark, we figure we’ll have much less of a trailing weed and other unwanted guest problem in general, allowing us to concentrate more on the beds themselves. By taking care of this before winter and any winter rains too, that’s even more of a help, since the garden can get pretty shaggy during those times.

Some new plants also put in — winter tomatoes, snow peas and cabbage — and you can get a quick tour of it all via a new YouTube upload I did:

As always, enjoy!

More from the garden

Again, from a few days back — a slew of great roses to be had, and we did a good amount of cleaning up, though my video here is before we started that (the pumpkin patch needed some work, but we did a yeoman’s job in improving all that!):

More on the garden front

Meanwhile gardening in general hasn’t been ignored, of course — this is a bit of a catchup here, first via YouTube clips from mid to late August:

Last Tuesday, meanwhile, I snagged a few shots:

That latter shot, BTW, was the zucchini that ended up being made into the spears I mentioned in the post previous to this one.

My favorite shot, meanwhile, was of the pumpkin that friend Tara, who is a newer addition to our garden group, ended up harvesting. It’s a very ‘her’ photo, as I’m sure her boyfriend Dan can attest to!

The combination of heat and approaching end of summer means that the main growing season is already winding down; however the garden crew all had a lovely meal the other day to plot for winter work and planting, which will be good as we are sometimes guilty of letting the garden to ground a bit during that time. So look for more updates as we go!

Meantime as a lead-in to the next post — while the recent Angeles National Forest fire is a sad event underscored by the loss of lives and houses, a perversely beautiful side effect can be seen in the sunset like this one noticed from the garden the other day: