Mockingbird.
Photos
Our first grosbeak sighting! This is a Black-headed Grosbeak. It is eating our cultivated California native grapes.
Mockingbirds enjoying our grapes (these cultivated California native grapes are for the birds!).
Mockingbirds love our cultivated native grapes 🥰 It’s the best seeing them swallow a large grape whole. We’ve seen at least five in our backyard. They mostly get along. We have a kind of neutral zone
Homegrown Fantasia nectarines are amazing, even when still firm. Hope I can keep the tree that’s been planted for 1-year safe from beetles. 🌱
Still many small earthquakes occurring south of Black Butte mountain on the Mendocino NF. Impressive M3.7 today AND a M2.7 on the same @raspishake seismograph.
On 7/31, six small <= M3.0 quakes ocurred on the Mendocino NF near Rocky Basin Creek. All within hours of each other. The last cluster was 7/24-7/25. Total of 12 tremors so far. I don’t know of mapped nearby faults. Fascinating. Here’s the 7/31 M3.0 quake from my @raspishake.
My @raspishake captured the M8.2 Alaska earthquake. And then some. Wow.
So there’s been a cluster of small shallow quakes in a central part of the Mendocino National Forest the last couple of days and this is the largest so far. Hmmm. Recorded on my @raspishake
We started pickling two almost full pint jars of Santa Fe peppers today. Turns out they’re not great for hot sauce as their flesh is pretty thin and they’re very seedy.
We made our first batch of hot sauce the other weekend. Two pounds worth of home grown peppers made about 32 oz of sauce (we like a sauce that is thicker and doesn’t dribble off things). So good. 🌱
It’s our first smoky day of the summer. The automatic air filtration device agrees with a bright LED and maximum power.
We have harvested around 6 pounds of peppers and there’s probably another pound on our plants. They were no longer setting fruit in our heat so we’ve stopped irrigating them. I think the peppers will be fine as the plants will care for them until they’re sucked dry.🌱
I love fixing cracked main drip line tubing and a bad pressure regulator seal in 100°F weather. I took this as an opportunity to remove previous temporary fixes and an unnecessary valve.
M5.1 earthquake south of Eureka, CA registered nicely on my RaspberryShake @raspishake though I definitely didn’t feel it (was asleep).
As far as I can find my county has a paltry 40% of its population fully vaccinated. That is very sad. So though I’m vaccinated, I’m still running errands masked. I don’t want mild COVID or to give it a chance to evolve.
So many ripe Serranos & other varieties. This is hands down our best year for peppers. It has taken many years of trial and error to get here. Hot sauce here we come! (Yes, we are eating some fresh). Oh and it’s fig season!🌱
Volunteer sunflower from this morning. It took advantage of an emitter and I’m a sucker for known flowering volunteers 🌱
Wow big seismic signal from near Tahoe and also the Central Valley‽ Recorded by my #RaspberryShake @raspishake #ShakeNet mobile app. I didn’t feel it. ☹️
Edible garden update: we continue to harvest lots of red & ripe peppers for hot sauce. The tomatoes are basically done for the season at 195 tomatoes weighing in at 34 pounds. We froze most. And finally, our figs are starting to ripen and we’re on nectarine watch 2021🌱
Had a really good Independence Day fried chicken with a slaw based on real garlic aioli & ripe red Santa Fe peppers.
I like Sierra Nevada’s Summer Break. Citrusy as expected and not too hoppy. It’s very refreshing. Just don’t expect a lot of complexity (it is a solid drinkable beer!).
The Annie Cat hoping neighbors don’t ruin her sleepy time with obnoxious fireworks this July 4.
Yesterday’s max temperature at my Orland, CA station was 115°F.
View of the backyard before we shelter indoors from the heat the rest of the day.
Covered up the avocados again in advance of today’s 110°F weather. Every time we do this it gets simpler and better. Wrapping the sheet around a ladder is genius.
Our peppers are now rapidly ripening. And they are crazy hot 🤤! 🌱
The lapins cherry we planted last November is dead. It only grew a few leaves. Super bummed. Stark Bro’s is great & gave me a 125% store credit, no hassle (with proof of dead tree via scratch test), so we will try again this winter. I have no idea what went wrong.🌳🌱
Last Monday, on the Bright Angel Trail at the Grand Canyon, we were lucky to see Spotted Towhees. They really blend in to their surroundings!
Last Sunday at Hoover Dam. Yes, Lake Meade is visibly very low (look at that bathtub ring!) and perhaps the dam is all the more impressive because if it.
