@enhydra lutris
We have not grown tomatoes here this year. I just couldn't find the time to get them started in the greenhouse and so on. No peppers either . Luckily we canned and frozen enough of last year's toms and peppers that we still have a lot. Just nothing 'fresh'.

Planting native plants is a good thing. The deer might leave them alone, or maybe not. But if they are native maybe they can survive the deer munching?

You have tons of birds! We do too. Hubby has decided to keep 5 big hummingbird feeders going. He fills them at least once a day. We've got something like 20 or 30 hummingbirds around here. It's crazy. Other bird include finches, wrens, red winged blackbirds, doves, pigeons, juncos... Heh. I am thinking about starting up with ebird, but I'm not sure how I'll keep myself from erroneously counting a bird twice; we've got so many. I use the merlin bird ap right now, as well as tons of old bird guides (yes, books, who'd have thought?).

As for garlic. It's an interesting thing to grow. It does take a long time, as it likes to be planted in the fall (at least where I am) and grow through the winter, to take off growing hard in the early spring. Since I've retired from growing for market, I do square foot gardening. So our garlic patch is about 4 ft by 6 ft. When the garlic is harvested I keep about 5 or 6 of the best heads/bulbs of each kind, enough to plant another 4 ft by 6 ft area. Ohh, and we only have two kinds of garlic, hard neck and soft neck. They come from northern European/southern Russian varieties so they are able to withstand some cold. Anyway, after harvesting I chop a lot of the garlic with a food chopper, then put it into olive oil in little containers and freeze them. Garlic, pre-chopped, ready for cooking, all year! It does ok in a paper bag in the garage, or kitchen, as well. And that's enough about garlic!

Have a great weekend with all the little flying critters

this morning.

Congrats on your garlic, I have given up on growing it, firstly, I really can't properly store/preserve what I do harvest, then there's the length of the growing cycle with a large bed completely devoted to garlic, etc.

Yesterday we had the redbud in the front yard topped professinally, with luck that will keep it alive a few more years and hopefully more. I've been busting my butt with a pruning blade attached to a 24' painter's pole and making very little progress. A crew with a boom truck took about 45 minutes to do a far better job than I was doing and cleaned up all the debris.

We harvested our first tomato of the season yesterday. It was a "patio" and we put it in a very large pot out back with a drip line and hand watering to boot. The fruit grows in a cluster right up near the main stem so we had to pull this tomato while we still could ger it out of 1)the cluster 2) the tomato cage 3) the critter exclusion fencing. It's 3" diameter and a couple or 3 days from fully ripe and we're finishing it off on the kitchen counter. My week to cook starts Sunday, so it might wind up on a pizza ;-), but a salad or blt seems like a better use.

We have to run out today to get some pavers to make front yard paths to get around and trim stuff from, after which we intend to plant a crapload of native species local to the area all over hell, starting with some yarrow that my wife has been hardening and readying for planting. It will be heavy on the salviaa, CA has a ton of species, and other "weeds". We hope that the deer don't like too much of it, they leave what we have out there already pretty much alone.

A few days ago our umpteenth brood of chickadees fledged and have been turning the yards into chaos and yesterday a batch of fledgling nuthatches joined them. Add the 2 species of wrens, the juncos, the hummers, the bumblebees, and monarchs and you get buzzed by something every time you step outside. Good training for the reflexes.

be well and have a good one

@Marie1
read Nobody's Girl but, as you've said, it's going to be a slow read. Keep on keeping on!

videos on the great draught which led me to Przewalski wild horses reversing desertification in Mongolia and that led to US restoration of US prairies with the introduction of Bisons.

Reading: "Nobody's Girl." slowly because it's much too horrifying and sad to read quickly.

Learned that escalators are equipped with accessible emergency stop buttons.

@on the cusp
Sounds like you had a good time with your two clients and the food Yum!

When I traveled to the middle east, as a high school student, for some reason I already really distrusted Israel. Not sure why, this was before I knew about the politics of the region, and the history of the region. Maybe it was because they kept threatening to shoot down our passenger planes or something? Now, they are just disgusting.

Have a good weekend!

Israel admittedly comes up with a scheme to rip off people who don't approve of their government? And wonder why we no longer support them?
I am disgusted by their treachery.
I had 2 clients come by just to bring me food...barbecue for lunch, doughnuts for breakfast.
We talked about everything under the sun, told jokes, really passed the time pleasantly while finishing up 2 probate cases and one divorce case.
Retirement is a tidge closer!
Thanks for the OT chica!

@earthling1
Hope everything is going good on the farm!

this most recent treachery. And the link.