End of January

Wow..End of January already. It's so nice to work outdoors all day long. John has been working on getting the solar going and I put in a kitchen garden and patio. Living on a hillside means that everything you do involves shoveling soil to make level. We still marvel at what we could have been thinking when we picked this particular spot on the property in which to build, however it's true...the soil is nicest right here compared to anywhere else-and it just feels good right here...hillside or no! Logic just does not rule.

New Patio

John Working on the Solar

  Maximus our newest adoptee is doing fine. He's got some serious OCD problems that are really weird though. He looks for dust bunnies, snaps at the air and we can almost imagine some sort of pretend dialog he's having with the dust. He's aways looking for something that's not there...or at least nothing that we can see.  He snaps at the dust in sumbeams that stream in. If he is focusing on something, he will wiggle his head so it appears that whatever it is- is  moving and lunges at whatever it is that he sees. Now we know why he had a container of rocks removed from his stomach, and....he charges Tansy, Willow and the cats too.  Max is weird, but he is also intelligent, extremely sweet, loving, affectionate and has obviously  had a lot of love and obedience training. Oh, and you cannot touch any of his feet, or touch him when he's relaxing. If you bump even one tiny hair, he screams like you've just  about killed him! What Would Ceasar  Do? hmmmm......

Today I will be work on the big garden, planting the broccoli, more kale, brussels spts, swiss chard, giant mustard greens, strawberries... i also need to begin digging holes for the berries and other fruit trees. We've got two apple trees already planted, but want another variety, and then Asian Pears, pommegranite (seedless), grapes, apricot, plum citrus, olive and citrus. The olive variety will be for salt curing and the citrus, probably mandarin which is good for here. The grapes will be seedless variety used for raisins and the plum is a prune variety. All good for curing, drying and longer storage.