Plum Sauce

The neighbor's plum tree overhangs the fence and has a bumper crop of beautiful fruit this year. And since we don't have any apricots or peaches this year, we have been busy making and freezing plum sauce.  Using about a cup of sugar per 6 cups plum puree.  Also made a great nonfat plum frozen yogurt. Yum! 2 cups nonfat yogurt, 3/4 C unsweetened plum puree, 1 C sugar.  Processed and resulted into 4 C frozen yogurt.

Update Feb 6 2012
My neighbor cut down her plum tree!!!!!!!!!!! So we went out and bought a bare root Santa Rosa from Lowe's and planted it today back where the cherries came out.

Robins and Lettuce

Except for a week long heat wave when we got back from the beach this has been the most delightful summer.  The robins have been hanging around and singing!  I don't remember that from other years.  It is really nice to hear them.  And they are still nesting.  I spotted this nest a while back and took this picture this morning.

This year I grew Jericho lettuce.  It has been fabulous!!!  Ten plants have provided lettuce for weeks now.  I have some seedlings still in cups and somehow they are still hanging on. I plan to plant them and see if they can still make it.
And finally are getting our first ripe tomatoes off of the Juliet grape tomato.  I think the tomatoes are getting a little too much afternoon shade, so they have been really slow this year.

Love the beach

I love the beach.  I miss the beach.  Haven't quite recovered yet from my week there. Here it is hot (over 100) there it was cool, mid 60's. The weather was fantastic, the best we've had in years.  It was sunny every day.
In spite of biking, boogie boarding, and long walks on the beach I still managed to gain 2.5 pounds.  There was just so much chocolate! My weakness! Next year I'm not even going to take chocolate.  I had ingredients along to make cookies, but with all the other snacks available I didn't end up making any. 

Finally summer

As far as I'm concerned this was really the first bike ride of summer! On June 14.  What a long extended spring we had, of cool and rainy weather.  The first day could have been the 13th I guess, but we were gone that day.  Since the 14th we have definitely been in a summer weather pattern.  In fact it has been so warm that we have switched to biking in the morning.
I planted zucchini seeds Saturday, and bean seeds today.  This is really, really late, we will see if anything comes of it.  Transplanted hollyhocks, yesterday, today, and maybe tomorrow.  This is reallly late too, I hope they can get established in spite of the hot weather.

It's raining!

Seems like we've been having more or less the same weather all year! It's actually pouring today.  I haven't managed to get the rest of my transplants in.  The Drosophila suzukii has made a mess of my cherries again, although we did get some good fruit off the Royal Anne.  I cut off the tops of all the cherries and stripped the fruit off them.  We cut down our old Stella.  It was in decline anyway, but still that brought a tear to my eye.  That had been such a wonderful tree and produced the best fruit until the suzukii came along.  Now it is starting to attach my strawberries, black berries and raspberries.  It has been such a cool and rainy spring I have bumper crops of them.

Here is a view from our bike ride yesterday.  It sprinkled the whole time.  Also a picture of the Oakland skyline.  Usually we are working on the other side of the bay, but got a chance to work in the east bay and see things from the other side.

Wendall T. Robie Trail - Memorial Day Weekend Hike

We went with Pam and Jesse to see Pam's neice (Mercyhurst) in the women's crew races at Lake Natomas on Sunday morning. Our plan was to hike afterwards. Admittance to watch the race was $15 per head, so Ted and I skipped that and walked across the bridge to the other side of the river.
I had found the Wendall T. Robie trail by looking about on the internet, and it seemed like a good possibility as it was close to Sacramento. As last year, Frances decided at the last possible moment that she would like to join us for the hike, so we had to backtrack to pick her up. Then we stopped at the freeway-close Raley's in Loomis to buy her lunch provisions, since her larder was bare of hike food.
Once we left the freeway we were on a windy 2 lane road, and then on a windy one lane paved road (no stripe but room for two cars to pass) and then on a windy one lane dirt road ( I was glad we didn't meet any cars.) I hadn't printed directions to the trailhead so we were relying on memory (never wise). We stopped by a gate to reconnoiter and luckily Pam noticed a trail sign, which was not obvious at all. It started to pour just then, so we ate our lunches sitting in the car and waiting for the rain to stop.
Were putting on our boots when two jeeps and a pickup came down the road. That was the only other folks we saw the entire day (nobody else was on the trail, this in the middle of Memorial Day weekend!).
The trail was very pretty; the white fairy lanterns were out in force, as was the Heuchera and the ticks!  The trail is mostly level, and there are a few places where you can catch a glimpse of the river far below.

Checking for ticks at the trailhead at the end of the hike. Note trail start on right side of road.

We started up the trail at 1.50 pm, and so finally turned around about 4.30. We never made it to Canyon Creek. Looking at the topo map, it was probably still miles away. The trip back on the trail was uneventful except there were a lot more ticks, since it had warmed up and the sun was out. Doug joined us for dinner (Sushi Hook) and dessert (Cheesecake Factory). Curiously, Pam ran into her niece at Cheesecake Factory. Got home about 10.45 pm

My Mothers Day Trip

Since one of our contracts was cancelled due to federal budget cuts, our spring work schedule suddenly became less busy, and I decided to go to Wisconsin to help Mom and Dad move into their summer digs.  Ted was amenable to making the trip.  Eric got to PE several days before us and helped the parents move up to the lake.  We had planned to fly out on Thursday May 5th and return Thursday May 12, but our flight was cancelled due to a mechanical problem.  After getting up at 4.15AM and spending most of the day in the airport this translated into a truly miserable time, but we were able to get the same flight the next day and move our return back a day, so we ended up leaving on the 6th and returning on the 13th.  Luckily on the flight out and back we somehow lucked into an exit row, so Ted was not miserable the way he otherwise would have been.

The weather had been very cool in April this year, and everything was further behind than it had been in May 2010.  Photo on the drive along Hwy 29. The first night we were there we went out to look at stars.  Good thing too, because the sky was cloudy every other night.  Ted had his bike, and biked every day (even saw a bear one day).  I did not rent a bike.

Eric had gotten a lot of the chores done already, but there was still plenty that we could do.  We turned over most of the garden, dug up the compost from the compost heaps and added that to the garden, planted his tomatoes and set up the wall of waters, raked the walkways Eric hadn’t gotten to, and set up the bird bath, among other things.
We had one great lightening storm during the night on Tuesday.  We took a neat walk in the Van Vliet Hemlocks with Eric, and came across all sorts of interesting things.  We identified a common plant which none of us was familiar with, leatherwood (Dirca palustris).  The first full day was really calm and I took a paddle in the canoe around Miller island while Ted was on his bike ride.
Also spent a lot of time helping granddad to get his computer network up and running. 
We played hearts with Eric and Granddad.  Couldn’t get Mom to play.  Also taught Eric and Granddad how to play pinochle.  Hockey playoffs were underway, so I couldn’t always get them to play cards with me.
Although the weather was mostly gray, it really didn’t rain much, and we were able to be outside a lot. In fact, today (Friday) was the least nice day, mostly because the temperature had dropped 10 degrees from the previous days.  On our drive back to Msp things had obviously greened up compared to the week before.  The trilliums were in full bloom in the woods along hwy 29, and we saw many nice woods where the forest floor was carpeted with trilliums.  The trilliums at Loon Lookout hadn’t started blooming yet.  I’m writing this in the MSP airport, and hope that we get home on time. (We did.)