A trip to De Luz Canyon

Yesterday we went on a trip to De Luz Canyon. It is located between Murrieta and De Luz and is part of the Santa Ana mountain range. It is a canyon but also a gorge, with according to dictionary.com is "a narrow valley between hills or mountains, typically with steep rocky walls and a stream running through it." It was about a 90-minute drive.

Pictures were taken with my iPhone4. I e-mailed them to myself (cause I was too lazy to plug my phone in???) and only sent them as large sizes. Therefore, although pictures are clickable for bigger version, they are not full version unfortunately (~600kb, as opposed to 2+mb).

I'm going to try to put these pictures in some sort of succession. Here is a picture facing backwards:

The road was so windy and bumpy! It's like the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, but more spine-rattling and less fun! Kidding... but I will admit it takes some skill to meander dirt roads. I'd more than likely try to floor the whole way which would probably end up badly. GB is a great driver.

We stopped on a turn-around point on the side of the mountain. We were on our way to see some waterfalls, but first, here are some pictures overlooking the valley.

Nice shotgun shells! It doesn't take long for me to remember why people need to be banned from places like this. Look what they do to it. /endrant Of course it would not be fair to punish all due to the actions of a few.

Another view! I think someone took apart a car down there, ANYWHO, aside from that, it's pretty nice!

I wish I knew what body of water that was. It was too square shaped to be anything natural. Here is another view off the edge.

The valley below this area had a lot of fence boards down there. I read that this is a known dumping grounds due to its proximity to a busy road. GB was telling me about how people will take stolen cars there, gut them, take what they want, and leave them. 

Brush. I really need to learn how to landscape like this - lots of color with little water!

Now, drumroll please. Here is the waterfall!

As you can see, besides the sun almost completely washing out my picture, the waterfall is looking pretty dry. Actually it just was dry. If you zoom in you can see the water marks (black) so at least you know I'm not fibbing. Luckily, late last night it started raining pretty hard so I'm hoping the waterfall and pond will fill up again soon.

Greenery and rocks.

Here's a shot to the side of the waterfall. Notice the tagging.

I tried to keep that garbage off to the side. Here is one last picture of the mountain. It's been long carved by wind, sand, water, birds, and whatever else. We continued on that way to head off of the mountain. No avalanches either!

I wish I had more commentary. Basically, it was a warm day, and there were a lot of lovely rock formations, greenery, and garbage. Because the waterfall wasn't... there... I'd say the journey was more fun than the destination, but isn't that usually the case? It was really stunning to see how green the mountains were even though it has been so dry. I hope to return in a few months once the rain has filled everything back up.

Attack of the hornworms!

**This blog is not for the squeamish!**

With tomato plants come hornworms. I've got both kinds, tomato hornworm and the tobacco hornworm. There are also other worms that look very similar but lack the horn. These worms apparently become huge moths - the size of hummingbirds. I don't care much for moths and I certainly don't care much for worms that decimate my plants!

Note: All pictures are clickable for biggy sized worms :)

This first specimen is a tomato hornworm - a huge one at that. I believe this is nearly full grown:

Note the horn, spots, and different sets of legs. Note also the size of the thing compared to my fingers! Granted I have long, piano fingers. ANYWHO... I hate to admit it, but at this size, this guy is actually kind of cute. I can't believe how bright, almost neon his color is. Reminds me of Heimlich from "A Bug's Life."

Now this one is a tobacco hornworm:

NOT AS CUTE AS THE PREVIOUS, in my opinion. He's slightly more offensive to the eyes - lackluster color, hairy, a more wrinkled appearance overall. For comparison, here they are together:

 And a final picture of all the worms I found that day, different sizes:

Did you find them? I believe there are 5. I suppose I will conclude with some tips :)

Finding
Search for them when the sun isn't very strong, so either in the morning or in the late afternoon/early evening is best. These guys are delicate and will most likely be on the underside of leaves. The huge ones don't have much of a choice though and tend to hang out wherever.

Hornworms are not the easiest to spot. They are wholly defenseless and therefore blend in nearly perfectly with the plant, so look for them while doing some maintenance (pruning, harvesting, pinching off suckers, etc).

POO IS THE CLUE Their feces look like very dark (brown to black) pebbles, from sand sized to pea sized, depending on the worm. Where there are feces, there are worms, and one worm can make a LOT of feces.

Birds can spot these guys very easily. If you can attract birds to your garden they can help a lot with infestation. Bright flowers, bird seed, and bird baths may be pretty and useful to add to your garden.

Handling
The huge guys have a strong grip and make a strange clicking noise with their mouths when angry/threatened. The tiny guys I pick off with my hands or scrape them gently with scissors or a stick,. The larger ones I remove by cutting the entire leaf or stem. More than likely the leaf has been eaten enough to where it is far too damaged to keep on the plant anyhow.

Disposal
No matter my disgust, they are a living creature and I try to get rid of them in the most humane way possible. I have a tank with frogs and newts so the smaller ones I feed to them. The larger ones are too big for the amphibians to eat (but the frogs do try), so I put them in the bird feeder and let the birds have at them. Otherwise, soapy water will drown them, as will cutting the heads off with sharp scissors (don't ask me how I know about that, and no, I was not the one that did it, and believe me... it was not out of sadistic joy, but for important purposes, but that is another blog).

Prevention
The larva will hide in your soil to hibernate for winter, so till the soil well after harvest and again before new planting. This should kill most of them. Your garden store will carry lady bugs and other beneficial insects which will eat the eggs. Once the worms hatch, hand picking and insecticides are the only way to deal with them. I prefer to stay away from insecticides but there are some natural types that should work.

If your plants are growing healthy and strong then the worms shouldn't do too much damage, but it is still best to control them. Good luck on the worm hunt!

A look at the garden

I haven't posted in so long and I'm not sure if I've even posted pictures of the garden yet before. Figured I would bring the blog back to life with some... life :). We've had a pretty good harvest so far and even though we lost the grass a lot of the other plants are doing well! Let's see here...

All photos taken with my iPhone4.

I threw a lot of old vegetables into one of the potters and the potatoes ended up growing. The plant itself wasn't very pretty and it had started dying. It was a lot of fun digging them up and this is what we found!

There are a couple banana peppers, a green bell pepper, and also some sort of tomato from the garden in the colander as well. The skin on the potatoes seems much thinner than from the store, and the meat is much smoother when cooked than store bought. Granted they did grow from a store bought potato, I still believe they are much better.

Now onto the plants...

Here are some strawberries, parsley, cilantro, and basil in this strawberry planter. We decided to place it in the larger 2x6 decking planter/bench.

A planter within a planter, redundant, I know! But I think it is a nice look.

A broader look, behind the strawberry planter is a watermelon vine. To the right are 3 tomato plants: heirloom yellow, yellow pear, and either a celebrity or early girl tomato, I forgot which.

The watermelon vine. The bulk of the planter is compost, which was too strong for the plants and I believe "burned" them essentially. A few held on and out of nowhere this watermelon started growing like crazy.

Yellow pear tomato on the left, heirloom yellow on the right.

The tomato plants are supported by a T-shape trellis that we experimented with. I think this is a nice design to support several plants, while keeping the plants at the forefront and the trellis more or less hidden.

The heirloom tomato appeared to die once transplanted into this compost rich soil. It then sprouted leaves, and then a lot of blooms, but unfortunately it is suffering 100% bloom drop, most likely due to an excess of nitrogen. :(

I trim the dead leaves and the dead blooms off. They crack or turn yellow at the last knuckle so I sometimes put them out of their misery before they get to fall off. I'm not sure what to do with this one, perhaps transplant it again? Seems that I will not get any harvest with it this way.

A close-up of some yellow pear tomatoes:

Here are some celebrity tomatoes growing in planters on the ground. We built these small planters to hide the base of the fence posts, which are metal and concrete. This plant is doing alright, the concrete happened to take up a lot of the space and this guy really had to work its roots to find soil!

Here is a celebrity tomato again, planted at the same time as the previous. There was hardly any concrete post blocking this one, look at the difference!

This is IMHO the perfect tomato plant - in terms of foliage to fruit ratio. I tend to grow tomatoes with more leaves than tomatoes, but not this time!

Here is a grape plant that was planted also at the base of a fence post. Grape plants are far more fragile than many other fruit bearing plants. It appeared to be dieing for many months. The existing leaves have all fallen off but all of the vines have a nice clump of growth at the end :). I have hope in this one!

Now here is a cluster of early girl tomatoes. These were planted a bit too close together - 3 plants in this small space. They grew pretty well though but I think there is far more foliage than fruits. These were set in a higher planter and now they tower well over us. We put a trellis in the planter itself, then placed some boards across the fence when those were not high enough.

I think with more time and space, this could turn into a tomato roof! I need a lot of shade due to my polymorphous light eruptions (PMLE) so this may be a new way to grow tomato plants :).

These are pepper plants which are growing in the same planter. The 2 on the left are green bell peppers and the 2 to the right are yellow banana.

Here is a lovely Japanese heirloom eggplant. The leaves are delicate, velvety green and purple. This plant is surprisingly easy to grow and fruitful!

Close-up:

Here are 2 more tomatoes, I believe celebrity's, that are growing in a pine potter in the front yard. This has the same style box trellis, just larger to support both.

These tomatoes had grown quite a bit before we added the trellis. We damaged a few of the stalks - tomatoes are extremely hardy and as long as the stems have a connection to the main stem, they will continue to get enough nutrients. I used some medical silk tape to keep this one together, as you can see the tomatoes are growing just fine.

I have more gardening pictures but will have to save those for another blog. We are blessed to be in San Diego and our growing season is quite long. I've had tomatoes survive a season, the whole year, and then fruit the next summer. I have some other herbs, fruits, and vegetables that I am going to plant and see how far I can keep harvesting.

Til next time :)

Video: Potter Bench out of reclaimed redwood

Just a quick video we put together of how we built a potter bench, bench potter. :) It takes some time and skill but I think the end result is pretty nice! Not bad at all, especially considering that most people would have either trashed or burned this wood. Now it's been reborn and will last several years if not much longer.

Some projects :)

Just decided to compile some pictures of some of the things we have been working on!!

A couple bathroom cabinets, knotty pine

Large garden bed with bench, reclaimed redwood

Bench potters, knotty pine

That's just some of them!! :) Been busy in the garage building planters for others and have been busy in the garden ourselves!! Have eggplant, pumpkins, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, and watermelons growing right now. Hopefully it will be a successful summer season :)

Video: Tomato Trellises

I have been MIA from this blog for quite some time. I have been busy with some girly things as well as garage things, so it's not a total loss. Been messing around on YouTube and Twitter a lot more than anything else, but did want to update with some projects we have been working on :)



We started a couple months ago on a garden. Mainly vegetables and such, we had everything in plastic pots but they outgrew everything pretty quick! Built some potters with reclaimed wood and now the vegetables are in a suitable home. The tomatoes grew so fast and started falling over so we made these really quick. We will mess around with more intricate designs but for now they will do!



I don't understand the image button anymore on BlogSpot lol...

Raised Garden Bed

We have been back in the garage. For a long time I have been trying to learn - nailing, measuring, saws, etc. I enjoy learning but I'm not sure I can ever build anything on my own. I am good at a lot of things but to pick up on something new that is so detailed and intricate is daunting, especially with so much room for error. So lately I have been doing a lot of planing. It is fun to see the wood go from garbage to beautiful. It is also very easy to do and I enjoy it! It gives him a chance to focus on the other stuff while I do this.

I have been messing around with video editing and here is what I've come up with.



I filmed and took pictures with my iPhone4. It is crazy how a phone is now a computer, camera, and video recorder. It is so convenient. I edited with Windows Live Movie Maker, which was included with my computer.

Here is a picture of the finished product, in case you do not view the video:

So sad the grass died! But the potter is nice. Still debating on whether to seal it, or to stain and then seal it. It needs a quick sanding before doing any of that, but you get the idea.

And to finish... young Butters harassing Minnie:

This is funny to me because, well this part isn't funny, but Butters was abandoned in a parking lot. And when I say parking lot, I mean abandoned parking lot. I don't know how long he went without seeing his mother or siblings, but about 3 days after getting him his first experience with a 4-legged creature was a dog. He was so interested in Minnie and she is scared to death of him. Now they just simply do not get along, lol. They got into a growling/hissing match once and Minnie scared the hair off of Butters right eyebrow. Well that is just how it is sometimes :)

Cheers

Life lately...

has been rather difficult. I love posting and reading others' blogs but... I just can't do anything right now.

Here is a picture of Butters as a kitten and I hope to be feeling better and back later on.

Poured Concrete Potter, version 1.0

This isn't the best picture but here is a small poured concrete potter we made. We stuck some sort of Japanese tree inside it, at least I think it is Japanese? Now those master gardening classes are looking very useful!

I swear we just put in that grass and it died due to flooding! lol, we need to step up our rain gutters.

Anyways, these are different from the previous concrete potters. First of all, it is one solid piece. Secondly, the sides are angled, which I really like. Thirdly, the mixture is different. I'd researched about people adding Perlite, finely ground styrofoam, and peat moss, among other things, as aggragate to the concrete/cement mix. It is simply a way to make it lighter, as standard concrete is really heavy. We had a look at peat moss at the store and it pretty much seemed like dirt to us. I remember watching Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe a while back where he was driving a truck that picked up roadkill from the freeways. They'd bring the animals :( to their lot, cover them in sawdust, and voila... several months later they were compost.

So... back to the potters. We added sawdust to the mix. We have tons of it from all the planing we've done. The sawdust absorbed a lot of water which made it a bit difficult to mix, but the finished piece is significantly lighter.

We greased up the forms very well using some VERY old cooking oil (circa 2001, amazing what you find deep in the cupboards) but as you can see it did come out rough in a few places. We are going to try sanding the forms first, which we should have done anyway but hindsight is always 20/20. We do like the rough look but there are 2 places where huge chunks came out. Still, the piece has lasted a couple weeks now and is still curing.

We have another kind of plywood with a backing on it that should make the concrete come out ultra smooth, he calls it glass. I am excited to work on those ones :)

Time to get in the garage and finish off that gardening bench! Have to cut some planks for the bottom, finish the tray, and sand sand sand.

I decided I don't get to share my cat Butters often enough, so maybe from now on I'll end with a nice picture of him.

Approx. 10 days old. We found him when his eyes had just opened, a bit crusty in the left one! He still has that pink toy too :)

<3

A Gardening Bench, in processu

Sometimes I ask myself, *WHY* do you keep posting things before they are done? Well I just get super excited is all, and this thing is about 90% done anyway.

:) It's a gardening table! The bottom is a shelf for whatever, and the top will have a bottom onto it. That's where the soil goes. I remember planting my mom's orchids and we had this tub where we mixed the soil with the bark together. So you pour whatever you want into that big tray, mix it up, then there's this thingamajig that slides across the top of the table. You put the pot there, fill it up, and... ya!

Photos taken with iPhone4

:) It's redwood. He was originally going to nail the bottom in, but I told him we should leave it as planks that sit onto the little railing. That way if it starts getting too muddy you can take em off and hose the whole thing down.

Close-up:

The legs are at 45 degrees. The planks and such are set in with dado cuts. Basically its a saw blade that's extra wide. Actually it was like 5 sawblades stuck together. Well I learned something new!

I'll have the finished one up soon, hopefully today!
:)

Rhinestone headbands @ LA garment district

I've actually had these for a few months now and finally took some pictures. My mom and aunt bought me these. My aunt started digging through the bins when someone started grabbing ENTIRE BINS of headbands. She bought about $3000 worth. My aunt had to grab whatever she could basically.

These were all taken with my iPhone4. Can't believe how much better this camera is than the other! These pics are between 1.5-2 megabytes each. All pics are clickable so that you may relish in the sparkle.

I believe I had this headband in the last post about shopping. Well here it is again, it's still my favorite :)

A white flower one. This has got some felt wrapped around it. Haven't worn it yet so I'm not sure how that'll wear but it's an interesting touch. Some of the rhinestones are AB - aurora borealis. That's the iridescent shine on them. Apparently it's done with a layer of 24k gold but maybe not all the time :)

Blue butterfly. This one is on a little spring, like those old hair clips all the kids were wearing back when I was in Junior High. It's cool but I'm not sure how I feel about it, it makes a funny sound when I'm wearing it. I didn't know it was springy until I opened it from the plastic. It's still cute though :)

White and black butterfly. I never thought that black rhinestones could be so pretty. They remind me of hematite.

White and blue flowers. This one is more symmetrical than the others, and the decorations lie in the center rather than off to one side. Reminds me of a pixie or of the 60s.

Brown and white flower. I haven't been able to wear this one because I've been so lazy to dye my hair red. It's a strange blond/brown/strawberry color and this headband blends right in.

What girl doesn't love rhinestones? I've done some rhinestone work in the past, mainly with my cell phone and some toy cars. I used to buy them at Michael's craft store for like $2.99 for 20. I found a great site that sold 1,440 (a supergross?) for $30. I ended up getting 2 shades of pink and clear. I should bust them out and find something to bling, like some heels!

I find that gluing rhinestones is easy but filling in the little cracks is the problem. Any area that is exposed will cause the rhinestones to
1) oxidize and/or
2) become clogged with dirt and then
3) fall off

These headbands are really sturdy and the metal that the rhinestones are glued into have little holes for the rhinestones to perfectly sit into. As for storage right now I am keeping them in my underwear drawer. Figure it's the softest drawer I have right now so long as I keep them away from the walls.

<3 Next post, earrings! And maybe some more wood stuff... or a nail blog considering how long my nails have gotten. Sheesh...

PS. Is it the LA garment district or LA fashion district? Just wondering!

A preview... part II

We've been working on concrete potters. Rather than poured in place (??) he wanted to try blocks that are stuck together. For transport this would be much easier. This is 2nd try and I think we got it. :)

First attempt was only concrete. Second time we added some lime and cement for more plasticity and adhesion. I think? The first ones were 3 inches thick and these are about 2. Even though they are thinner they came out much stronger. Edges remained in tact for the most part too.

I took these shots with the iPhone4 and WITHOUT contact lenses and I believe a dog present made it into the shot. BOO. You can see the grain of the wood that has been left over.

Inside shot:

So we just have another one to put together, its basically done, and he's going to work on the back, finish up the seat, stick it all together and woo!! Should be done soon :) We've been trying to keep busy, especially with the massive amounts of rain in San Diego, lots of roof and drywall damage from our friends and family. It's nice to be able to get back to house projects.

After that we're going to try some poured in place ones as well as some different finishes like stains, salt, etc. It should be fun!

Til next time...