Tag: California

More winter gardening ideas for the Sierra foothills

Did you think you were through gardening in California Sierra mountains?  Usually we have rain and snow, but noooo.  Here are more winter gardening ideas and things to do for the Sierra foothill garden in California: Get ready to sow seeds. Rake out and remove weeds in the area you want to seed. Do not add…

Fire cautions in the Sierra Foothills

We took this photo up on the hill above our house, in the California Sierra foothills on  Tuesday. There is still fire danger out there and you can see the burned trees from 12 years ago.  This smoke above was from a stolen car set on fire. Fire slowly spread through our property in August 2001 before we…

Western bluebirds in the Sierra foothill garden

One of my favorite color combos is cobalt blue and turquoise. That is why I like this picture!  These are Western Bluebirds, Sialia mexicana, and have appeared here in my Sierra foothill garden for the first time this Fall. I’ve never seen them here in the ten years we’ve had the property.  The Western Bluebird is…

Soap plant close up

Soap Plant in full bloom

Studying the singular Soap Plant As the season passes, the Soap Plant is on the wane, still over 7 feet tall, waving over the drying meadow and garden. Here is a record of its life cycle here in the Sierra foothills. Wavyleaf Soap Plant, Chlorogalum pomeridianum Startling at first, this strange plant is really very interesting.…

How Peckinpah Mountain got its name

After establishing our home on  Malum Ridge, looking out onto Peckinpah Mountain, I heard from neighbors about the  logging history in our town of North Fork, CA.  I became curious about the Peckinpah name and being a bit of a history buff, I decided to dig a bit further. This is what I found. Peckinpah Mountain rises 6000…

October 2000-The adventure begins…we buy property

This area around Oakhurst has everything we need and we had such a good feeling about it, …enough so that when we started looking for property, it was easily found. In fact, Larry, without even seeing one place declared, “Put an offer in on it!”,… which is ultimately what we did.