Jill Doughtie

These mushrooms are growing on a log near the north side of the house. They popped up in the rainy weather.

A venus fly trap lives on my window sill. Chlorinated water would kill it, so I give it distilled water. I’m running low on distilled water, and don’t want to buy another plastic bottle. We’re expecting a rainstorm soon. Perhaps rain water would do the trick.

A week or so ago, I moved two golden currants (Ribes aureum var. gracillimum).

Originally, they were in the middle of the shady part of my vegetable garden where I grow kale and other greens. Their leaves were turning yellow and they looked unhappy. They are native plants, and they don’t like to be watered regularly the way that vegetables do. So I moved them to the little strip of earth between the house and the driveway, where I don’t water. I gave them a good drenching to help get their roots established, and then I left them alone. At first, I though the move killed them. But…

…they started growing new leaves.

I dug up the Self-Heal I had planted in the back yard under the orange tree, and moved it to the front yard where it should get more sun.

Its tag said it could grow up to ten inches tall, but in the orange tree shade, it never grew above an inch.

I’m posting a picture of its tag here so that I can remember what it is: Prunella Laciniata / Cutleaf Self-Heal.

In the space under the orange tree (where I also pulled up a straggling kale plant and lots of clover), I planted creasy greens seeds. Those are creasy greens still standing over in the right side of the bed. They taste spicy, like watercress, and they do well in the shade.

Yesterday, we made a fire in our backyard.

The smoke drifted up into the avocado leaves.

I ate a tangerine from our tree.

Ants were walking across two of my three clotheslines like they were highways.

I am thinking about taking the clothes pins off and giving them those clotheslines. Since I’ve started composting in the back yard, they mostly stay out of the kitchen. Why not make them a little happier?

(View larger)

This is my second Cinderella pumpkin. It’s smaller and less pancake shaped than its predecessor.

(View larger)

I am drying the seeds from the first pumpkin and saving them for next year.

(View larger)

North side of the front yard (View larger)

Here’s what the north half of the front yard looks like right now. The yard slopes down toward the sidewalk, I used the ground up palm tree root and soil to make berms to try to stop runnoff water. One runs along the sidewalk, and another one is about five feet up from the sidewalk. Then I mulched over the berms and the bare dirt — and about ten square feet of grass that I thought I’d just try covering instead of digging out.

South side of the front yard (View larger)

On the south side of the yard, I stopped pulling up grass entirely and just mulched right over it. When I did that in the back yard with a thick carpet of pine needles, most of the grass died. This is pear tree mulch — I don’t know if the pine needles were a special part of killing the grass so easily last time, or whether any mulch will do. I want to avoid buying and using plastic, and I don’t have lots of newspaper or cardboard handy to layer below the mulch, so I’m giving plain mulch a go.

These are the berms I made out of palm tree root and soil. They’re about half mulched over — mulching is on hold right now because of the brush fire up in La Canada and all of the smoke in the air.

(View larger)

We were exploring the Arroyo near the Aquatic Center, and I saw this scrap concrete used to make terraces and borders. I want to do something like this in my garden.