Goodbye, aquarium

Sometimes you just have to face reality. My little piece of ocean had been in decline for several years and it was time to pull the plug. We moved here on a hot August day six years ago and even though I spent most of my time fussing over the tank while our friends carried our stuff in, it suffered from that day. Projects and maintenance on our new home took priority over the tank and critters died off one by one. I was really bummed when the clam died, because I'd grown to like that iridescent vulva. Last year I had a dinoflagellate bloom that killed a lot of things off. To get rid of the dinoflagellates I upped the alkalinity component which worked, albeit like chemotherapy. Since my snails were gone, algae grew like crazy. I still had a few determined zoanthids and disc anemones left and I didn't want to just throw them out so I put an ad on Craigslist and a woman from Danville took the live rock with them on it. Good luck to her.

I'm keeping the tank, lights and equipment in the hopes that maybe at a later date when I have the time it'll need I can restock it. Maybe I'll get a chiller and stock it with critters from the local coast. We'll see. I admit I feel kind of liberated right now.

Vegetable garden update

We're finally enjoying the fruits of my labor. Literally. The tomatoes are ripening, with plenty of fresh basil, oregano, thyme and rosemary for pasta sauce, and the strawberries are producing again. The snow peas have died off and the lettuce has slowed down; I think it's too hot. I'll plant them again when the rain starts up again. Elsewhere at the Haus we're still buried with plums and peaches. I pickled some of the plums and I'm attempting to dry the peaches.

Like A Rock

That's what the soil is like out here. I love it in California and don't miss much of the Illinois climate, but it did make for some damn good dirt. Soft, black, rich as fudge, you could grow anything in that. Throw in a little mica and it was a sponge. The adobe out here is good for nothing but bricks.

I had to set up my sprinklers already this year and the price of water is going up. I've already got a drip in the back so now I'm going to put raised beds in the patch of grass that gets cooked by the sun every summe no matter how much I water. I can easily run a drip line to it. and grow stuff that we can eat.