Henny Penny Farmette

An egg has fallen from a nest, but it’s cracked and empty of any baby bird

Mornings are my favorite time of the day. My mind is freshest after a good night of sleep, and my observation skills are best in the early hours.

With a cup of hot coffee in hand, I meander around the farmette, spying spider’s webs, still moist with dew; an outbreak of aphids on the peach tree; the first of the Mr. Lincoln dinner-plate-size roses in bloom; a pair of mourning doves poised for flight at my approach; and sunflower seedlings poking up at last in the patch dirt where we planted them two weeks ago, just as the rains were ending.

This morning, I am surprised by the amazing number of almonds that our tree has produced. It won’t be long before the squirrels discover them, too. So I’m faced with a decision of whether to share the bounty with the squirrels or place netting over the tree.

Near the front door, a bird’s egg lies in the grass, cracked on one side. From the white color and brown speckling, I figure it probably belongs to a house wren. Wrens like to built nests in cavities or flowerpots and even mailboxes. Our resident wren constructed a small nest in a hole of an exterior roof beam. This egg was likely one of five or six that the house wren typically lays.

The lettuce and peas and onions are already ready for our table

I loved that command, “Grow seeds, grow,” when I first read it in Arnold Lobel’s book about Frog and Toad, two best friends. Now that I’ve planted seed flats with heirloom seed, I water and watch it daily for signs of life. And that command to the seeds keeps popping into my mind.

What is growing and rapidly is the purple Chinese wisteria that we planted in the area we’ve designated as a sitting area in the garden. It already has a concrete slab large enough for a car. We plan to tile that concrete with a pretty backyard patio tile and build a trellis around it to support the wisteria.

Also growing are the baby apricots that have formed as the blooms leave the tree in the wind or by dropping to the ground. The peaches are swelling in size as are the almonds on the tree that we cut so severely that my neighbor thought it might not recover. It has.

The garden will rapidly take off with another rain and the forecasters say we have chance for showers on Tuesday, my birthday, and the beginning of Passover. Surely the timing will be auspicious for my garden.

Almond tree in bloom

Rising before the sun does ensures that I have quiet time to stroll around the fecund farmette. It’s my time to contemplate my writing  project before tackling the work  and also to feel gratitude for the life I have here in rural Concord, living close to nature.

As the sun breaks over the horizon, splaying out across orchard, I walk to each fruit tree and study the the way the sunlight illuminates the swollen buds that look like little jewels. Many have already burst open along the branches and some branches have even leafed out.

Along the back of our property, tree canopies of pink and white signal that the apricot, plum, apple, almond, and peaches already have broken dormancy. The hachiya persimmons and the Tilton apricots that we planted on the eastern side of the property, however, are still “sleeping.” We moved the Lady Banks climbing roses over there, too, to make way for more renovation work near the house.

A honeybee forages on Spanish lavender blooms

The French perfume and Spanish lavenders add a deep purple hue  to the ever-evolving palette of spring color. Noticing a honeybee on the lavender, I thank the Creator for its presence. I much prefer the bees doing the pollinating than having to do it by hand as a friend recently told me she had to do with her fruit trees in Santa Cruz County.

The rhubarb bloom has to be cut so the plant will grow more stalks

Seemingly overnight, the rhubarb sent upward a giant spike with what appears to be a bloom. This hasn’t happened before to these plants, so I’ll need to cut that bloom in order to focus the plant’s energy into forming the cherry-colored stalks. The leaves and bloom would not be edible–they’re poisonous. The stalks, however, are delicious in pies.

As the sun continues to climb, I head for the house and a pot of hot coffee. Time to go to work. I’ll take a break later and stroll around outdoors to discover what I might not have noticed on my earlier walk.

We shared our multilayered “I love you” cake with each other and our neighbors

In virtually every relationship at some point, spats happen. Here on the farmette, my husband and I agree most of the time, whether the issue is about plants, animals, or us. But when we don’t agree,  buttons get pushed and, sadly, anger seems to rise with the decibel levels of our voices.

After the argument is over, we both feel the tension released but the wounding remains in our hearts. We try to find our way back to the other. Sometimes it requires building bridges. I guess that has been the process of marital relationships since pair-bonding began.

Recently, my spouse did two wonderful things following our “disagreement.” He apologized (I did, too)) and he then took off in his pickup, returning home  home with an angel statue that now stands in my garden to remind us to be gentle and kind to each other. He also brought sweets and the symbolism didn’t need to be explained.

Quarreling is awful. He hates it. I hate it. But we work so very hard here on this farmette, trying to create shelter (still) while we develop the land. It’s not an easy business. Being too tired to think straight as a reason why you lashed out at the person who should be the most important individual in your life is a terrible excuse.

It’s a better idea to own up to your part in the drama, do what you can to make things right, forgive, and forget. Express tenderness when making up; that way, the ending of hostilities becomes all the sweeter.

Mourning doves grousing on an old bench after feasting on birdseed

Lately, the way the birds, insects, and wild creatures are pairing up, you’d think we were on Noah’s Ark instead of the Henny Penny Farmette.

I’ve never seen such bird and bee traffic as in the last few days. This morning,  I put on the bee suit and joined my neighbor on a tour of inspection to see if the bees survived the cold snap we had a week or so ago. We had snow on Mount Diablo and a hard frost elsewhere. But the bees are fine, and there are lots of babies.

Honeybees make honey and royal jelly for the queen and babies through the winter

Today, the yellow finches are congregating around the Nyjer feeder and singing their little hearts out. There’s a woodpecker in the neighborhood (maybe two). I haven’t seen it/them but there’s a whole lot of tap-tap-tapping in the nearby oak trees.

I often see a flash of blue as I work to move and amend the soil on our property. Last year about this time, pair of Western blue birds were scouting locations for a nest. They are back and I hope they stick around.

The plaintive coo-coo-coo of the mourning doves has become a chorus of late. At first, I noticed a pair in the back yard and now there are several pairs. They mate for life. So we’ve put out birdseed and I fully expect to see a nest or two being constructed in the next few weeks.

Two praying mantises hanging onto a leaf

Birds and bees are either producing young or making preparations to produce offspring. But the praying mantises? Who knew?

So what I’m taking from all this pairing up is that Mother Nature expects warm days ahead. The wild creatures made it through the winter. No one has to tell them what to do now that spring is only weeks away. Like I said, it looks like Noah’s Ark around here.

Sun-loving wildflowers that we planted last year are putting on a show this February

It’s difficult to find color in the dead of winter. It’s the last week of February and around the farmette it’s beginning to look like spring. Mixed in with the drab brown and gray and green are dazzling splashes of orange and yellow.

On Sunday, my husband and I helped out a neighbor with the pruning of her fruit and citrus trees. My husband will also be removing her aged trellis, cutting back the Japanese wisteria and reducing the size of what looks to be a 20-year-old grape vine.

She had two orange trees both loaded with oranges, so there was harvesting to be done before we could even start pruning back the tree. One was a Valencia orange, known as the juice orange. I cut into several of them this morning and found them streaked with red. What came to mind was that perhaps the busy little honeybees had cross pollinated her Valencia with a Blood Orange. I’m growing several on the farmette.

Valencia oranges are great for eating fresh or juicing

Citrus trees need little pruning. It’s easy to thin the shoots and branches, rather than shortening the tree. You can also revitalize an old tree that is unproductive (my neighbor’s tree was old but still producing a lot of fruit) by pruning a little more severely but such a severe pruning can stop fruiting for one to two years.

Growers say to feed citrus four times a year; I feed mine once a month with a deep watering. Soils that don’t have good organic matter and nitrogen will benefit from compost, blood meal, cottonseed meal, and well rotted manure on the soil surface out to the drip line. If your citrus isn’t performing for you, try scratching around the surface of the soil under the tree. This stresses the surface roots. Citrus need good drainage. Water slowly and deeply.

We’ve been lucky to have a stretch of warm, sunny days here in Northern California at the end of February. The fruit and nut trees have burst into bloom. Around the farmette, there are pink and white buds opening on the apple, apricot, peach, and almond trees.

Daffodils add their dainty shades of yellow to the otherwise drab winter landscape

The field in the back is knee-high with wild mustard and its blooms are bright yellow on green stalks. The yellow and orange daffodils and purple hyacinths create a floral motif on the drab winter cloak of Mother Nature . . . at least here on the Henny Penny Farmette. Just another reason why I love living here.

Daffodils are most beautiful planted in drifts

William Wordsworth wrote, “A host of golden daffodils; beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

These fragrant flowers evoke for me memories of growing up in rural Missouri where every spring, bulbs, in repetition of an ancient cycle, pushed upward through the earth with swordlike precision and flowered.

I’ve plucked some of these beauties for my desk. If I must work indoors, then I will enjoy their lovely yellow blooms where they rest in a vase upon my desk, which otherwise is piled high with books. I work. And every once in a while, I capture a whiff of their sweet scent permeating the room.

The following is a list of of several types of daffodils:

Trumpet daffodils (these include the King Alfred, Unsurpassable, and Beersheba (the latter is a white whereas the former has yellow blooms).

Large-cupped daffodils (Carlton, Fortune, Gertie Millar, and Tunis).

Jonquilla Hybrids (Trevithian)

Triandrus Hybrids (Thalia)

Double daffodils (Mary Copeland, White Lion, Twink)

Small-cupped daffodils (April Showers, Mrs. Nette O’Melveny)

Cyclalmineus Hybrids (February Gold)

Poeticus narcissus (Actaea, white flowers, yellow cups, edged in red)

Plant them in the fall in a location where they won’t be moved as they will increase in number each year. There are a lot of reasons to like daffodils: they give your garden color in the spring, the tolerate heat and cold, they are unappetizing to golphers, and they soon naturalize in the landscape.

A Shropshire Lad , a sweetly scented David Austin rose we grow on the Henny Penny Farmette

While perusing the December 2012 edition of American Rose, the Magazine of the American Rose Society, I discovered an article about the diseases of roses and some of the ways several rose experts would deal with them.

In a discussion of treating rust, downey mildew, and blackspot, the rose experts concurred that  prevention is the first line of defense against these diseases. Once you find evidence of them in your garden, you must remove and destroy infected leaves and stems, including the leaves that have fallen to the ground.

Another important step, among others, was to spray an oil and bicarbonate of soda recipe referred to as the Cornell Baking Soda Formula.

The ingredients are simple and can be found in many homes: 1 Tablespoon each of baking soda, horticultural or summer oil, and castille soap. Mix these into 1 gallon of water, shake, and spray.

For advice on growing roses that are best suited to your area, check with your local nurseries and consider joining your the American rose society or local garden club. Also, think about choosing varieties of roses to grow in your area that are resistant to these diseases.

Amendments are easy to work into the soil in raised beds

There are many ways to improve soil composition to grow healthy plants. Healthy plants produce more abundant and bigger yields.

The soil on the Henny Penny Farmette is mostly heavy clay. After a rain, its sticks together like solid, cold mass of margarine. In the summer, it hardens like concrete and also cracks.

To make soil more porous, it is necessary to add amendments that permit air circulation and water penetration and retention.

There are basically two different types of amendments. The mineral amendments such as vermiculite, pumice, and perlite  are generally used in sandy soil to create aeration and water retention. Types of organic amendments for soil such as our clay soil include manure, leaf mold, ground bark, peat moss, and sawdust. These rely on bacterial action to break down into a soft, crumbly humus.
In our vegetable growing boxes that are 4 feet by 6 feet, we include 25 percent organic amendments to 75 percent soil. Sometimes we even up the percentage of amendment material. We turn it thoroughly.

The clay soil immediately benefits from the tilling (adding air) and also from the blending of organic material into the soil to change its density, nutrient value, and permeability to water.

Raised beds, which I first saw on farms in villages along the Volga in Russia, allow us to control the soil and makes it easier to add amendments and mulch. However, we also have garden beds, too, that benefit from organic amendments.

Acid-loving plants include this Camellia japonica

With spring only two months away, there is still plenty of work to be done in Northern California gardens. The following is my list of things to do on the Henny Penny Farmette.

Apply iron sulfate to acid-lovers

Camellias belong to a group of plants that thrive in soil with a pH balance that is acidic. Examples of a some other acid-loving plants include azaleas, begonias, caladiums, gardenias, hydrangeas, impatiens, Japanese maples, jasmine, and primulas, to name a few.

This time of year I give these plants an application of iron sulfate to maintain the plant’s green color. My blueberry bushes and citrus trees also benefit from receiving an application of iron sulfate or the non-staining Iron Plus.

Build or purchase compost bins and raised-bed earth boxes

Every garden needs compost and bins make it easy to produce that nutrient rich material that plants love. This is the time to build or buy compost bins and also the raised bed boxes. We’ve put in eight and have plans to build more.

Prune fruit trees

Prune fruit trees for shape and also to produce fruit. For example, I cut back the peaches and nectarines by about 2/3 of last year’s growth. The new growth bears only once. Hence, the need for vigorous pruning. I cut back the apricots by about 1/3 of last year’s growth, paying special attention to any spurs (usually productive for three to five years). Branches with spurs that age will have to be replaced by cutting them away so the tree can produce new branches with fruiting spurs.

Nectarines need pruning and spraying for Peach Leaf Curl

Fruit and nut trees that require very little pruning (mostly to eliminate dead wood or crossing branches) include cherries, apples, pears, and almonds. I tend to cut away small branches of the almonds. The nuts will be born on new spurs and shoots.

Apply dormant oil to roses

Roses, once they’ve been pruned, need an application of dormant oil such as Bonide All Seasons Spray Oil (for organic gardens). The oil is beneficial for eliminating over-wintering pest populations by smothering the pests’ eggs. To halt fungus-precipitated diseases like rust, blackspot, and powdery mildrew, spray roses with liquid copper.

Dress the lawn with a winter fertilizer

Feed the lawn with a good quality lawn fertilizer to keep it green, growing, and resistant to rust and diseases arising from malnutrition.

Spray liquid copper to curb Peach Leaf Curl

An application of liquid copper keeps peaches and nectarine trees resistant to the disfiguring curling of new leaf growth.

I know that the work I do now in the garden will pay big dividends when warm weather arrives and the chores of planting and tending vegetables begins. The above list is my garden chores checklist for this time of year. Feel free to use it to build a checklist for your garden.