by angela@diggingbliss | Feb 4, 2014 | Uncategorized
So cool! You know those prolific, inedible sour Seville oranges growing at Capitol Park? Seville oranges can be used to make marmalade! Corti Brothers is selling marmalade made from the fruit of local trees! I had stopped by Corti’s the other day looking for edible goodies for a birthday gift basket and came across A Capital Vintage Marmalade. Since I’ve never used marmalade in my life, I didn’t buy any, but I plan to go back and get some.
A quick Google search yielded plenty of uses for orange marmalade. Ham baste figures prominently. Incidentally, Corti’s had enough local products for a person to put together an entirely local gift basket. You could start with some Dark Star coffee beans from Coffee Works, add a Ginger Elizabeth chocolate bar, some Capitol Park marmalade, and Bariani olive oil and honey. There are bound to be even more local goodies there. Nuts and wine, maybe.
by angela@diggingbliss | Dec 31, 2013 | Uncategorized
Except for throwing frost cloth over my little lemon tree, herbs, veggies, and succulents, I haven’t done diddly in the garden since I planted my bulbs. We have also shifted gears and are more focused on figuring out what we are doing to the inside of our house. Everything from a kitchen remodel to adding on a second story is being discussed. In fact, we’ve met with an architect at his office and he’s coming out in a couple weeks to walk the property and give us ideas.
My front yard plants are looking pretty crispy after the week of sub-freezing temperatures we had recently. I think nearly everything’s alive… just have to see where new growth emerges closer to springtime. My Cuphea and Princess Bush were the hardest hit. Happily, I was able to make one last batch of pesto before my basil plants succumbed to freezing temps.
Inside, my kitchen windowsill orchids are spiking… and outside, my red epiphylum is blooming for the first time since I rescued it from my old abode, where I soon realized no one cared whether it lived or died. It took nearly five years to bring the plant back to health and now it’s blooming. Yay, resurrections!
From December to March, there are for many of us three gardens – the garden outdoors, the garden of pots and bowls in the house, and the garden of the mind’s eye. – Katherine S. White
by angela@diggingbliss | Nov 25, 2013 | Uncategorized
The first time I went out to plant daffodils with my nifty bulb auger, the soil was too dry to drill easily. Yes, our irrigation system is on the fritz. Again. So I soaked parts of the front flowerbed with a garden hose, drilled a couple random test holes in the more moist sections. Ah, much better. I knew I’d also be contending with sycamore tree roots, but figured the edges of the triangular bed were pretty safe since they were farthest away from the trunk.
I’d gone back and forth on planting pattern aesthetics. Did I want to sprinkle the bulbs in the bed in a pseudo-natural “I am a daffodil living wild in the foothills” fashion, or did I want a clump, a drift or a more refined row. In an uncharacteristic moment of formality, I decided to try a formal row along one edge of the bed. That is… until I started drilling. Every hole in my row hit 3/4″ pipe that was buried a shamefully shallow 4″ deep, proving yet again that the people who landscaped my yard before I moved in were just as naughty as I thought.
I find examples of landscaping naughtiness all the time in my yard. There’s weed fabric buried under 6 inches of soil… too-shallow PVC pipe being battered by freezes and my shovel… sod netting tangled into in the soil in my flowerbeds… the irrigation timer never works… terrible to non-existent sprinkler pressure. We’re going to do our best to exorcise this demonic landscape installation.
Speaking of demons and Hell… my new bulb planting aesthetic is guided solely by wherever the hell my auger happened to randomly avoid pipes and roots. Most of the bulbs are in, and I’ll plant the rest today now that the rest of the bed is moist. I should probably do a little careful Bermuda grass tugging around my California poppies as well. I used to be afraid to pull Bermuda, preferring to spray with organic herbicide. When I use the herbicide, the Bermuda does turn brown, but then I forget about it and it greens up again. So I pull. It’s this little game we play.
Challenges aside, my bulb auger is an awesome tool. You simply attach it to a drill (mine’s cordless) and pull the trigger. If you need a bigger hole, simply make two adjacent holes. Using it, I feel capable. That didn’t stop a man walking his dog from saying, “That tool is too big for you.” I chuckled awkwardly out of politeness, but it was difficult to conceal the wince. No, dude. My bulb auger and compact DeWalt drill are not too big for me; apparently the sight of a woman planting flower bulbs in her front yard is “too big” for you.
It’s a terrible system.
But the good news is that then there is new life.
Wildflowers bloom again.
That’s it? you ask. That’s all you’ve got? No. I’ve also got bulbs.
-Anne Lamott. Stitches
by angela@diggingbliss | Oct 11, 2013 | Uncategorized
I rarely buy “paper books” these days, due to my lack of shelf space and frugalista tendencies. Instead, I use my SFPL and SPL library cards to download digital books. This works especially well for fiction and literature (mostly essays, in my case), but with gardening books, I prefer owning print copies so I can refer to them any time.
How did I justify this purchase? I was given a gift card by my mom in exchange for computer help. I absolutely refused her offer to pay me, of course, but she was persistent so I finally gave in to her offer of a gift card she “didn’t need”. I’m always happy to help friends and family with computer issues, gardening, etc. They help me with things too, like icky-boring-housecleaning and couch shopping.
What I got–
I’ll report back after I’ve had a chance to peruse the books. At the moment, I’m busy figuring out what to make for dinner, and tomorrow I’m off to Santa Cruz for the String Gardens workshop at DIG Gardens! Stay tuned for a blog post on that!
by angela@diggingbliss | Aug 24, 2013 | Uncategorized
Had a great day with the kiddo in beautiful Santa Cruz yesterday. Made my first visit to Dig Gardens! Prepping the photo album, but here’s a tiny taste!
by angela@diggingbliss | Jun 16, 2013 | Uncategorized
I’ve had these Flora Grubb Thigmatrope Satellite Fleet air plant holders on my mental wish list since the first time I saw them online. This is the most clever, ingenious, slightly rustic, simple, elegant, artistic way to display air plants on a wall. At fifteen bucks a pop, I didn’t immediately order seven of them. I went through my usual internal dialogue–
Fifteen dollars? Each?! I wonder if I could make them. No. Who do I know who could make these for me? Elliot. Who do I know who would actually do it? No one. They really are clever. And somebody did already make them. Fifteen dollars really isn’t so bad and they’ll last forever. And here they are. And I’m only going to get three for now.
During my first visit to Flora Grubb on Friday, I decided that if I was going to buy anything, it should be a few of these, with an air plant for each. Perusing the air plants is half the fun. (more…)
by Fine Gardening
by Rebecca Sweet
by Debra Lee Baldwin
by Debra Prinzing
