epic slo-mo hawk flying

Kristen shot this last night, our resident red shouldered hawk, with a vole in it's talons. Nature!

Female Hooded Oriole

 not the best pictures... I've seen this bird in the garden the last couple of days, passing through on the migration trail

garden 4/24/2020

 I kinda like that the bee is out of focus, flying into the frame

 is this a carpenter bee from the greenhouse?

 Salvia microphylla, "hot lips" sage, native to Mexico, hummingbirds dig it

 western fence / blue belly lizard doing push ups

bee shadow

two from Kristen

flowers!

cool cat on a hot day

red shouldered hawk vs. lizard

perhaps a little graphic but that's the nature of wild nature. the hawk catches a lot of rodents, benefiting the garden tremendously. this time it caught a good sized lizard.

garden 4/21/2019

 not quite rule of thirds but close

 borage, bee

 fuyu persimmon

santa rosa plum, english walnut

Older photos, revisited

We were contacted about tabling at the 50th anniversary celebration of the UCSB ES dept. ES has been involved with the garden for a long time, they built the greenhouse around 1985 and David Cleveland taught his small scale agriculture class out there for years. These are some older photos.

Garden 12/30/2019: plants

Nikon D500, 18-300mm 

 same leaf, different backgrounds

 gopher purge

 cherimoya

 dino kale tree

garlic

Garden 12/30/2019: critters

black phoebe

wrought iron pig, we also have a wrought  iron giraffe now!

ana's hummingbird (probably)

black Lizzy, she prefers rainwater

Trailblazer

Lizzy girl doing some trailblazing, photo by Elyce

Vegan banana or cranberry or pumpkin bread

I've been making this for workdays because many gardeners are vegan. I'm a cook, not a baker, which means I don't like measuring things, so this is semi-informal.

Grind 2T flax seeds in a clean coffee grinder, mix with 5T water, this is your egg replacer
Add a can of cranberries or pumpkin or 3 ripe bananas
Add 1/3 c neutral oil like sunflower
Add a splash of vanilla
Add 1t salt
Add some honey or jam if you used pumpkin, it might be sweet enough if banana, it definitely is sweet enough if cranberries.
Mix in about 1.5 to 2c flour, generally a mix of whole wheat, rye, coconut, etc. GF flours are ok, too. You want a moderately thick dough.
Mix in 1/2t baking powder.
Chocolate chips or nuts or whatever are good

Pour into oiled pan
350 40 min, put a knife in, if it comes out clean it's done

Hummus from scratch

soak 1c dried garbanzos in a quart of water 12-24 hours
bring to a boil, simmer partially covered for an hour with 1t salt + a bay leaf or sage or a little kombu (if they are from a store that sells alot (IV coop) they cook in an hour, if older beans they can take 2-3 hours)
let cool, covered

blender:
cooked garbanzos with remaining liquid if not too much
1/2 c tahini
pour in olive oil for a couple of seconds
2T chia seeds to soak up the liquid
garlic to taste; I use small cloves that are annoying to deal with for regular cooking, and don't bother peeling them
juice from 2 lemons
it might need a little more salt

Planting Fava Beans

a little illustrated tutorial...

dried fava pods

 dry favas out of the pod

 soak them overnight in plenty of water

 drain off water, put on a paper towel. note how much plumper they are than in the first pic.

fold towel in half and place in a plastic bag. note I added a little extra water than what is pictured above so the towel was evenly damp. I put a tomato on the bag so it was sorta closed.

after 2.5 days, beginning to sprout

after 4 days, ready to plant. you can plant them with a bigger sprout, too if the timing works out that way. plant about 5" deep, keep soil moist-ish, but they are pretty tough. no real pests. you plant in the fall, they produce March or so. they produce ALOT. eat fresh raw, fresh lightly cooked, dried.

 you can get seeds from the IV food coop (bulk bins) or rareseeds.com currently has 4 varieties available 

Herbicide for Dinner

good article. Herbicide is what's for dinner.

Critters in the garden

 not the best picture, funny roost for the red shouldered hawk in the background

 hawk feather

I love it when Lizzy's tail falls through the cracks when she's sleeping