Compost: A Living Thing

I've been composting for a LOT of years. I *think* it all started back in the late '70s -- maybe early 80's -- that I started composting. And compost is a living thing. It's full of all sorts of organisms that return once-living plants back into the constituents for new plants. It needs to be kept moist and it needs to be given plenty of air. And, in the process of breaking down the material, the pile of compost heats up. In heating up (if it gets hot enough), it kills seeds and disease organisms. To assist in the heating up, one must occasionally water and turn the materials over (that's the moisture and air part).

But, I'm a lazy-ass composter. I set up a pile and just keep building it till I *have* to do something with it. When I just have a pile (no bin, no walls to keep it in place), the ground-feeding birds (such as the California Towhee and most sparrows) work really hard at scattering the pile while they're looking for bargains. Then I have to go out, scoop up all the out-lying bits, and throw them back on the pile. This does a fine job of aerating the pile, but it never really gets hot like a good compost pile should.

When I have compost bins, well... I'm equally lazy, but with a different outcome. I keep throwing vegetative matter on the pile -- month after month, even year after year -- till the bin is stacked to the sky and not cooking down (actually shrinking) anymore. Then I *have* to remove the bin to another location, transfer the as-yet un-composted stuff off the top to a new location, and spread the remaining compost on the bottom (usually quite a lot of compost).

The problem with this is that, again, the pile did not get very hot and is, therefore, chock-full o' weed seeds. (The good news is that, when I spread out this seedy compost and the weeds sprout, the pull up quite easily because they're in nice, fluffy compost!) 

But my compost piles are living things in another way, too. Last fall I discovered that a shriveled, sprouting potato that I threw on the pile had started growing! There was a potato plant growing up out of the middle of the bin!  No, I did not go digging to harvest potatoes. Somewhere along the line, someone (Mom, I think) up-ended a bin of recently-pulled weeds onto the potato plant. I haven't seen it poke back through... yet.

This weekend I noticed that something else was growing up -- quite vigorously -- from the same bin. It is the hacked-up Elephant Ears plant that I threw in the bin last summer! (History: I'm pretty sure a bird "planted" a seed several years ago and the plant grew slowly for many years. Then it exploded and started crowding out my desired plants. So, I dug it out, chopped it up, and threw it in the compost bin.) Now it again is putting out foot-long leaves from the compost bin.

Gotta do something about that!

Nest Abandoned

Apparently the Mourning Dove couple that I mocked so roundly in my last post read that post and moved out in a huff. The nest looks the same this morning as it did the other evening and each morning since. And there's been no sign that they have tried to visit it at all. *sigh*

Engineers of the Animal World

You know, when I think about engineering feats in the animal world (not including humans, that is :-), I think about the beaver and its dams, the honeybee and its combs, and the weaverbird and its nests. Actually, most bird nests are quite the engineering feat. A number of years ago, a pair of bushtits built a nest under a hanging plant in my backyard. I didn't get a photo, but here's an example. I've posted photos of hummingbird nests. They all manage to gather just the right building materials to meet their need and then weave and shape them into a safe place to lay eggs and hatch and rear young to fledgling stage. 

What I don't think of are Mourning Dove nests. Good lord! These guys are the slackin-est engineering students ever. In my yard, they usually slack out and throw a few sticks into a hanging pot and call it a nest. I've seen Mourning Doves cross three sticks at a horizontal fork in a tree and try to lay eggs. The slightest breeze comes up and the eggs come down. It's a wonder they succeed as a species!

But this afternoon I spent an amusing couple of hours watching a pair of Mourning Doves set up housekeeping. 

The back end of my deck has slats and supports a Wisteria vine. As you can see, there's a wad o' twigs bridging a pair of slats near a rafter supporting them. That is the "nest" that is in progress.

I spent a couple of hours watching as Mrs. Dove sat on the so-called nest while Mr. Dove went furniture shopping. Watching him pick out furniture was fairly amusing. He'd flap down to the ground and pick up and throw down stick after stick. Then he'd find a likely candidate that he'd pick up and throw down a number of times, picking it up at a different point along the stick each time. Then, when he had just the right stick, he'd fly up to the fence, over to the end of *a* rafter (tho' not *the* rafter), back to the fence (but to a different spot), over to a nearby tree, then *finally* to the nest with the new settee.

Remember, Mrs. Dove is sitting on the nest. SO, what does Mr. Dove do? "Oh, honey. Don't you lift a little finger. I'll take care of it." He jumps up on her back (no, not to do the do) and tucks the settee in next to her. Then leaves. (Say, what?!?!) 

I'm thinking, this is pretty wacky. Maybe it's a one-time work-around. But no-o-o-o-o! He does it like ten more times. Once, while he was out shopping, she stood up, turned around, and settled back down. When he got back with the new armoire, he jumped right up on her back, placed the armoire, and left. 

By the way, the furniture shopping process is fairly competitive. Mr. Dove threatened to kick another dove's ass for shopping in the same warehouse store. I mean, we're talking a good ten feet away and Mr. Dove takes offense at the intrusion and starts posturing, charging, and generally taking chase till the other guy finally left the vicinity (i.e., my yard).

If anything comes of this nest, I'll do more posts following the progress, but this is not the first nest doves have started at the back of my deck this year. They may abandon it as being too close to frequent traffic... or neighborhood cats.

Have you ever listened to a Mourning Dove taking off? They sound like the Three Stooges: whoop, whoop, whoop!

A Lupine Follow-Up

Well, I dug out the packing list for the California wildflowers I ordered last fall, just to make sure for myself that I'm not insane. OK, that I'm not insane on this point. Despite the rampant blooming of yellow lupines, the only two lupines on the packing list are "Arroyo Lupine" (Lupinus succulentus) and "Sky Lupine" (L. nanus). No "Yellow Lupine" (L. densiflorus aureus).

By the way, this weekend just past brought us a mini heat wave with highs in the mid- to upper-nineties (F) here in San Jose. It apparently tickled the collective fancies of the Yellow Lupines!

The number of yellow spires doubled over the weekend. 

Phoebe Families

A-way back in the early months of 1998, my Little Dog (TM) Sparky and I moved into this house. Sparky proceeded to do what Little Dogs(TM) do and "mined" the lawn with Little Doggie(TM) land mines. The Little Doggie(TM) land mines proceeded to do what they do and started attracting flies. 

By the time the warm months of summer rolled around, we had more flies than we know what to do with. We kept the screens closed. Windows that didn't have screens were kept closed. Sparky used her doggie door which flapped closed almost instantly. But still, we got flies in the house. I set out fly traps that you can buy at places like OSH and Home Depot. I was capturing multiple full bags of flies every week in those things! And still they kept coming. (I decided that the traps were attracting flies from the next counties, so I quit using them after a couple of months.)

Well, that fall my household budget recovered sufficiently that I splurged and bought a bird-feeding apparatus. It's one of those modular devices that comes with a socket you screw into the ground, a pole that fits into the socket, and various formations of curved arms that you clamp onto the pole. From the curved arms, you can hang a wide variety of bird feeders: thistle feeders, tube feeders, suet feeders, ... 

Well, you can also hang a bird bath from a curved arm.  You can also get a "dripper" device that you can attach to a hose bib and run up the pole to position above the bath so that it slowly drips and keeps the bath full. (The dripping also keeps mosquitoes from laying their eggs in the bath.)

And that's what I did. Very soon, lots and lots of little birdies were stopping by for a drink and a bath after getting their fill of seeds. But other birds were also stopping by for a drink and a bath who were NOT there for the seeds! Even better, they were stopping by for a drink and STAYING for the bugs!

The next summer we had almost NO flies. We still had plenty of Little Doggie(TM) land mines, but very few flies outdoors and NONE indoors. Yay! 

The birds that helped the most in keeping the fly population down were the Black Phoebes. 

They perch on anything they can find to perch on and watch. Suddenly one will sally forth in a loop-the-loop path as though in a drunken stupor. Then you hear "SNAK" and it swoops back to a perching place as it gup-gup-gups a bug down its gullet. (If you don't hear the "SNAK," it probably didn't get the bug.) The photo above is of a young fledgling. Its mom & dad quit foraging for it a week or so earlier. 

I saw something the other day that heartened me. An adult phoebe was shopping around at the base of the bird bath. It was shopping, not for food, but for building materials! They use mud to bind their nests together and to the structure. For example, they build nests on a small shelf under eaves.

A pair of Phoebes built this nest under my front eaves a few years ago. You can just make out little football-shaped balls of mud against the blue. Those are about the size of the inside of a phoebe beak.

Here a new fledgling waits for mom or dad to return with a mouthful of bug. I'm happy to say that this is but one of three babies that fledged from a single clutch a few weeks ago.

I'm even happier to note that it looks like Mom & Dad are preparing a new nest for a new brood. At this rate, there won't be a flying insect to be found in these parts!

Really. It's True

Some of you (OK, one of you) called into question whether that double, ruffled pink & cream flower was really a California Poppy. Well, it really was. And so is this:

Note the California Poppy Foliage and the more standard California Poppy in the upper left corner. Oh, and then there's the pink version in the background.

:-)

It's Double! It's Ruffled! It's Amazing!

I was out pulling weeds this morning and I spied a new form among my "mixed" poppies. It seems that every time I look I see a new form among my "mixed" poppies, but this was really-really different. It was double! I haven't seen any "double" poppies. Ever. But wait! There's more! It wasn't just crinkled, it was ruffled! I haven't seen any truly ruffled poppies. At least, not of the California Poppy variety of poppy. You tell me: Is this amazing or what?

Right next to the double-ruffles-and-flourishes poppy was a dainty white poppy, but the backs of the petals are deep pink!

The yellow lupines continue to bloom and have quite the backlog of buds just waiting for their opportunity to display their spikes of gold!

Sadly, the blue lupines seem to have come to the end of their bloom cycle, but there is good news. They are putting on LOADS of seeds!

Each of those pods seems to be packed with at least a dozen seeds! Guess I'll be collecting lupine seeds for next year.

A Surprise!

I know I've probably bored the dickens out of you with poppies -- and I will do so some more below -- but first I wanted to share a surprise I encountered the other day. 

What's so surprising? Well, I didn't knowingly plant any yellow lupines, only two blue lupines. 

OK. Back to the boring, ol' California Poppies.

Oh, and one, last, happy denizen found in my CA Natives Garden bed on a Blue Elderberry leaf:

Baby Birds in the Yard

I'm so stoked every time this happens.  This year a pair of Black Phoebes hatched out three babies in or near my yard. They arrive hit-and-miss over most of the day, but come late afternoon, the entire family arrives for dinner. Mom & Dad dart and sally around the yard, snak-ing up flying insects to feed to their three young-uns. Sadly, because it's late-late afternoon, they're usually in shade, so I'm challenged to get a good photo. But here's an OK photo of one of the fledgelings.

One evening, all five were queued up on the fence top, but I couldn't get all five in a shot.

Yet Another Poppy

I forgot to go out back the other day when I was collecting photos of the many colors of California Poppies. Out back the poppies are mostly the "generic" orange-colored poppies, but a few are of the "Moonglow" variety and are nearly white.

Poppies of Many Colors

As promised in an earlier post, I now have many poppy photos -- poppies of many colors and with textures!

First, a quick overview of the setting...

Poppies in the foreground, Tidy Tips in the mid-ground, and Foothill Penstemon 'Margarita BOP' in the background.

Did you ever wonder about a flower called "Tidy Tips?" Maybe this will explain it all.

Anyway, back to California Poppies. Just as a reminder, this is approximately the usual color of California Poppies (but this one is somewhat crinkle-y and less satiny).

But this one is much more yellow and has scallop-y edges.

And then there are two-tone, extra-crinkle-y poppies.

But there are also smoother two-tone poppies that look more like a sunrise.

And here's a view of one of the strongly pink poppies.

It amazes me how very blue the green foliage can be.

Just one more crinkle-y orange poppy for good measure!

Who knows? More colors may be holding out on us yet! 

In the meanwhile, the Lupines, Sticky Monkeyflowers, Bluebells, and even the Goldfields are continuing to bloom. It's all very springy.