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Sacred Dew Drops
After the last rain, I strolled outside to inhale the fresh air. Fascinated by the dew on my plants. I retrieved my camera to photograph what I saw. Idea for a blog, I thought. But the topic I envisioned that day was rather black and white. Black words arranged into sentences on a white computer screen. Words such as dew point, temperature, and relative humidity. Mere words.
There's nothing wrong with such topics or words. But after losing more than a few friends and acquaintances to cancer recently, I found my direction shifting; my focus, changing. My garden was showing me something sacred. Yet in my busyness, I was about to miss it. All you need to do in our neck of the woods is stop and notice spring. Spring break, Passover, Easter — this season of the year is a time to reflect and refocus on your garden, whatever you believe and whatever you plant.
Where I come from, there's a song I learned as a kid that speaks to coming “to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses.” Over the years, I seldom gave pause to observing dew drops. However, now as I review those earlier photographs I took, I see what alluded me before. Spattering. Splashing. The leaves almost appear as if they are seeping with sweat. More to the point, dew on plants looks like they're weeping. Water diamonds that vanish with a touch.
Perhaps I'm waxing a bit too poetic here. Forgive me. Gardeners who are also writers can't help themselves sometimes. When we see spiders in shadows and lessons in loss, we look for ways to describe what is in our face so readers see it, too.
Today, back in my garden again on bended knee staring at dirt, I realized there's not a better position on earth for cultivating what matters. Gratitude for each rain shower that renews the sun-parched earth. Gratitude for simple yet sacred dew drops. Gratitude for every single moment of this topsy-turvy unpredictable life, even if the living of it means that I risk losing.
Dew drops. (photos by Launa Herrmann)
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An Un-bee-lievably Generous Gift
What an un-bee-lievably generous gift! Debra Jamison, state regent of the California State Society of the Daughters of the American...
Debra Jamison (left), state regent, and Gayle Mooney, state treasurer, share a bench that the California State Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution purchased for the UC Davis bee garden.
DAR members celebrating the bees beneath the olive trees on Bee Biology Road.
New Spaces in the Garden
Nothing makes a gardener happier than having a new garden to develop. It's probably like giving a painter a fresh, blank canvas to paint. Well, that's exactly what happened to me last weekend, and I'm so excited at the possibilities with this new space.
It all started with a project I had put on my husband's “honey-do” list. We have a typical side yard that I never let anybody see because it is where the not-so-pretty items are - the garbage toters, the compost bins, the currently unused chicken coop, the air conditioning unit, the broken chair waiting for the next scrap metal pick-up day, etc. Also back there is an 8'x10' shed. I've wanted to move the shed for some time so that the bedroom windows on that side of the house don't have to look out on that bit of an eyesore. I thought I might throw some hardy shrubs out there and call it done.
Anyway, my husband headed out there Sunday and took the shed apart (it's plastic interlocking panels). Moving about 12' back, he worked with our kids to set it back up. Oh my goodness! It didn't occur to me that the vacated space would look so big and blank and ready for ideas! My imagination was on overload thinking of all of the things I can do with that space. Can you say courtyard garden? Two bedroom windows look out on that spot. My husband had to put the brakes on my ideas when I mentioned taking out bedroom windows and installing french doors. A lot of my ideas become his projects, and he knows his limits of what he can or can't do!
Now I spend every spare moment looking at garden designs and plant ideas for the new space. I'm all over the internet, gardening books, and landscape magazines planning what I want to do. I'm hoping to have some big pots out there, and since I've never really tried container gardening, I'm looking forward to the experience. How about you. Have you ever “found” a new gardening space in your yard?
Wish me luck!
Blank slate. (photo by Janet Snyder)
Be on the Lookout for Spotted Wing Drosophila
It's cherry growing season and a good time to begin looking for spotted wing drosophila (SWD), Drosophila suzukii. SWD is a small fruit fly...
Agriculture research not immune to drought
Fitchette opened his story with the plight of ag research at the UC West Side Research and Extension Center near Five Points. Many of the farmers in the area will receive no surface water allocation this year; neither will the research center.
The facility can pull water from a deep well, but it is not enough nor is the water quality adequate for all the farming operations, said Bob Hutmacher, UC Cooperative Extension specialist and center director. He said scientists at the station must cut back their water use this year by 25 percent.
“I can speak for myself: I have about a half dozen cotton projects and a sorghum project, along with a sesame project and a couple of other things I'm working on,” he said. “I'm downsizing most of them to the greatest degree I can and I'm going to cancel one of them.”
One trial that will not go forward at West Side is an almond variety trial. However, UC Cooperative Extension advisors in other areas are working with the Almond Board to keep the research underway. UCCE advisors Joe Connell will oversee the Chico State almond variety trial, Roger Duncan the Salida trial, and Gurreet Brar the Madera County trial.
The Western Farm Press Story included drought-related ag research news from myriad UCCE academics:
- Duncan said his work with fruit and nut crops has not been negatively impacted by the drought.
- David Doll, UCCE advisor in Merced County, said the increased reliance on groundwater has ruined several orchard nitrogen trials because the groundwater in northern Merced has high rates of nitrate nitrogen, which acts as a nitrogen fertilizer.
- Dan Munk, UCCE advisor in Fresno County, said he will continue putting off alfalfa trials at the WSREC “indefinitely until a more secure water supply is available.”
- Scott Stoddard, UCCE advisor in Merced County, reports positive and negative impacts from the drought. He won't do tomato research at West Side REC, but will continue work in sweet potatoes to determine how little water they need to produce a reasonable crop.
- Chris Greer, UCCE advisor in Sutter, Yuba, Colusa and Glenn counties, said some rangeland trials were impacted by the lack of rain.
- Bruce Lampinen, UCCE specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis, has seen his orchard trials in Arbuckle severely impacted by the drought.
