Has it really been so many months since the last post? Sorry about that…summer beckoned and living is best done outdoors. Yesterday’s heat felt like our true summer had finally begun and yet the morning breeze carried the first idea of the coming fall.

We have around 30 roses and usually during this part of the season, the blooms fry in the heat, but this year’s unusually comfortable weather meant that the early July pruning brought a bumper crop of flowers now. Walking out in the morning with not just the scent of roses, but the individual scent of many kinds, is a special pleasure.

Here are most of the 22 kinds that are planted in the main rose bed.

A week after getting our first three, I went to the feed store and picked up a fourth chick, an Ameracauna (the kind that lay blue-green eggs). Her name is Mandy (yes, another character on Ugly Betty).  I was a little worried that integrating her into the existing group would be a problem so I had set up a little fenced area for her to hang out in. It turns out that like human babies, chicks don’t have the pecking-order issues that adults do.

Betty, Hilda and Willy looked at her curiously for a few minutes and went back to their business. If anything, our new Mandy is the terrorist of the group, waiting until everyone is asleep before she decides they’ve made the mistake of being between her and the water or the best way to get to her napping spot is over them. Mostly they’re getting along wonderfully.

It’s been amazing to watch the girls grow almost hourly. Just a week older, they’re twice the size of the little one and their feathers are coming in quickly. Those fuzzy butts are now showing the idea of tail feathers and the first set of wing feathers are more impressive. They’re very calm about being in my hand so fear no chick abuse while taking these shots:

This is just a lovely group of chicks to have around. From left to right: Betty, Hilda, Willy and Mandy.

For those of you waiting for me to finish up our round-the-world-trip posts, please be patient. Every time I sit down at the computer, I get distracted by our girls who are living right next to my desk. More often than not, I wind up just watching them instead.

Ah, chicken butt. Beaks and fuzzy butts are the two things that look pretty much the same from chickhood on up.

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Well everyone made it through their first night. The temperature in the terrarium stayed a constant 95 degrees. Betty is pecking at everything to see if it’s worth eating, including the new feathers on her sisters. She also seems to be very good at finding bits of feed that’s wandered into Hilda and Willy’s fluff.  Poor Hilda just wanted to take a nap this morning, but other two apparently have a different schedule.

I think you can see a change from yesterday. The new “real” feathers are more visible on their wings and the girls are  certainly gaining weight.

	Willy

	Betty

	Hilda

After our long trip it was comforting to see everything was pretty much the same. The roses are coming into bloom, there are plenty of oranges on the trees, and the sourdough starter is still alive. And yet it feels a little off …there aren’t more animals around. Milton, the dear, is a pretty quiet dog and doesn’t take up as much space as Zack used to. Then there were the chickens whose presence took up a surprising amount of room. I’ve particularly missed watching them doing their morning inspection of the back yard during my morning coffee. Well that changed yesterday with a trip to the feed store in the rain to inspect the horse troughs full of peeping chicks.

Here are our new girls:

Willy is a Golden-Lace Wyandotte, and in about six months, she’ll be laying medium-brown eggs. I chose her because of the glamorous look of the mature bird. (Willy is short for Wilhemina.)

Those of a certain age might recall Foghorn J. Leghorn, ruler of the Looney Tunes barnyard. Hilda here is a distant cousin being a Barred Leghorn. Since everybody seems to be focusing on brown eggs, it seemed like a fun idea to get white ones. I’m a little apprehensive as Leghorns don’t have the best reputation as backyard pets. Hopefully our hand-raising will make her less flighty.

Leghorn chickens, by the way. are named for the city of Leghorn, better known to us as Livorno. And instead of saying “leg horn”, we’re really supposed to say “leggern”.

And finally we have Betty, a Maran (French in origin). She is probably of the Cuckoo variety, developing the black and white barring like Hilda when she feathers out.  The color of her eggshells will be a very rich brown.

They’re all two or three days old. They took to the warm terrarium where they’ll stay for about month very well, quickly figuring out where the food and water are. Betty seems a little delicate, hopefully just from the long trip. It’s alarming, then hilarious to watch them dashing about only to suddenly drop to the floor to take a nap.

Our feed store has posted a schedule of chick arrivals online so I’ve been able to pore over descriptions and choose the ones for us. It would be nice to get an Ameracauna to complete the egg-color spectrum when next week’s shipment comes in. Her name will be Mandy (as in Amanda).

If it’s not obvious yet, they’re all named after the women on Ugly Betty.

[Concord Feed & Fuel’s chick arrival dates]

Between going to work and caring for a very sick dog, there are still plenty of fall chores in the garden. In October, we start to get just a little bit tired of eating tomatoes so the surfeit of cherry tomatoes must be dealt with. A few days ago we harvested a lot of Black Cherry and Matt’s Wild Cherry tomatoes and laid them out in dehydrating trays.

I think drying in the sun dulls their color as well as invites infestation so we put a dehydrator in a far corner of the house away from traffic (they get pretty aromatic). An advantage to drying small cherry tomatoes versus, say, romas, is they’re ready to go into a dish or salad with no cutting required. After a couple of days, we wound up with these lovely jewels:

This summer had an unusual number of cool evenings, which meant some plants wouldn’t set fruits (like melons). That’s why it was surprising to these beauteous melons nestled in the vines.

On the right is one of the few hybrids allowed in my garden, a Galia melon. With netting similar to a canteloupe, the flesh is greenish-white, tastes amazingly good and not at all like the orange muskmelon. There’s fullness of flavor extending all the way to the back of the palate I usually associate with umami. On the left is an old heirloom variety, Tigger. Weighing about a pound, it has white flesh and tastes a lot like canteloupe. (Galias occasionally appear at farmers markets…keep an eye peeled for them.)

Both filled the kitchen with wondrous perfume before we ate them.

I love this time of year in the yard because everything ripening is fresh and new. By November, we’ll be bored with them, moaning that the plants are still alive, and might “accidentally” neglect them to hasten their demise. For now, it’s exciting, every morning brings new discoveries.

This morning we saw cukes and chili peppers:

A neat new plant for us is the rat-tail radish, originally from Asia where the Thai call them phakkhithut, it was actually grown in the US since the mid-19th century. Looking suspiciously like a weed as it gets going, the pretty pretty blue & white flowers are followed the elongated edible seed pods, which really do taste like radishes. They’re seen either picked or still on the branch in farmers markets with Asian suppliers. I think this would be an extremely easy plant to use in open ground anywhere.

Finally (for now), the raised greens bed has been going full-force for a while now. We normally eat lots of this stuff, but it’s impossible to keep up with what’s ready now. There are several kinds of salad greens, some cooking greens and the cukes which climb the trellis to give everything shade when they’ll need it most in a few weeks.

The first tomato of summer appeared in the garden over the weekend. As about as small as a tomato could possibly be, this variety – Matt’s Wild Cherry – is the best-tasting cherry tomato I’ve grown. Even though we have varieties that are supposed to ripen earlier, Matt’s Wild Cherry always beats them by at least a week.

(Pommes d’amour, love apples, Paradeiser are lovely, evocative alternative names for the juicy fruit.)

It’s been a long time coming, but still it’s sad to see that Smith & Hawkins is calling it quits.

It’s unusual how things bought there over the years easily come to mind:  the white California poppies that regularly appear in our yard came from plants purchased at least ten years ago, the sturdy Adirondack chairs with the S&H markers. my first snail-leafed begonia, as well as our long-lived Haws watering cans.

During the housing bubble, the move away from the garden and towards very expensive outdoor furniture was an understandable choice, but finally a fatal one. The garden chemical-addiction pushers, Scotts Miracle Gro owned S&H and deserve some of the blame as well.

On our way somewhere else, we made a stop in Santa Rosa  to see the home and gardens of the great plant hybridizer, Luther Burbank. It’s a lovely place, right near downtown Santa Rosa. If you’re thinking of visiting, admission is free, guided tours are available as well as a cell phone audio tour.

One thing I like about places like this is that the plants are clearly labeled (for the most part.) Here are few of the interesting things we saw:

And just a couple of notes:

• I don’t usually like roses that don’t have much scent, but the Moonstone’s prettiness almost makes up for that defect.
• The same goes for shrub roses…I sort of just don’t ‘see’ them. The Gourmet Popcorn, however, is one I could definitely like in our garden.
• They had the giant burdock next to the artichoke’s close relative, cardoon. Their thistle-like flowers look very similar.
• Luther Burbank was developed elephant garlic. It was surprising how nice (and not stinky) the flower head is.
• Burbank worked on a spineless and edible cactus hybrid, which could be used as forage for cattle in desolate areas and as human food (both the paddles and prickly pear fruit). It’s kind of an unstable hybrid and the spine do come back after time.
• The lemon verbena tree was the biggest surprise for me because I’d never seen a tree form, being used to seeing them as bushes.