Cape Gooseberries

Today I finally picked some perfectly ripe Cape gooseberries! It took them almost 2 months to be ready. The bright orange color is very Halloweenish! They definitely look like an autumn fruit. One of the reasons I fell in love with them right away besides their taste is that I always feel like opening a little present when I break the papery calyx to get to the berry. It's such a fun fruit to eat.

I have 4 Cape gooseberry plants but so far the one in the pot has most berries. Since Cape gooseberry is native to tropical Peru, Columbia and Ecuador and related to tomatoes, I figured it must like heat and lots of sun. I was able to move the potted Gooseberry around to get most sun.  In the winter I can bring it into the sun room if the temperature gets too low. I hope they all survive the winter and produce more berries next year.

My Amazing Honey Bee Friends

I grow 5 bushes of lavender flowers all around Sand Village Farm. I love their scent and color. I know my honey bee friends love them as well,  so I want them to visit often. The sound of buzzing bees are music to my ears in the hot summer sun. They are amazing little creatures. Let me tell you just how amazing they are:

Honey bees have 6 legs, 2 compound eyes made up of thousands of tiny lenses (one on each side of the head), 3 simple eyes on the top of the head, 2 pairs of wings, a nectar pouch, and a stomach.

Honey bees have 170 odorant receptors, compared with only 62 in fruit flies and 79 in mosquitoes. Their exceptional olfactory abilities include kin recognition signals, social communication within the hive, and odor recognition for finding food. Their sense of smell was so precise that it could differentiate hundreds of different floral varieties and tell whether a flower carried pollen or nectar from meters away.

The honey bee's wings stroke incredibly fast, about 200 beats per second, thus making their famous, distinctive buzz. A honey bee can fly for up to six miles, and as fast as 15 miles per hour. The average worker bee produces about 1/12th teaspoon of honey in her lifetime. A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection trip.

A colony of bees consists of 20,000-60,000 honeybees and one queen. Worker honey bees are female, live for about 6 weeks and do all the work. The queen bee can live up to 5 years and is the only bee that lays eggs. She is the busiest in the summer months, when the hive needs to be at its maximum strength, and lays up to 2500 eggs per day. Click here to learn more about the Honey Bee Life Cycle. During winter, honey bees feed on the honey they collected during the warmer months. They form a tight cluster in their hive to keep the queen and themselves warm.

Check out the short youtube video I create for more photos of my honey bee friends.

We Are Now Sandvillagefarm.ORG

Sadly, the domain name I have been happily using for almost 3 years has been held hostage by Google due to one of their many changes in order to generate more revenue. Knowing Google, it's unlikely I'll even get a reply to my plea on getting my domain back. In the meantime, I am using sandvillagefarm.org. Hopefully, in a few months I will regain the original domain name.

Peppers

Months ago I planted an assortment of peppers - red, orange,  green, and yellow bell peppers plus some sweet banana peppers. For months they didn't seem to be growing at all and looked as if they were dying. I shifted my focus to the passion fruits and beans, and all of a sudden I found peppers flowers blooming and peppers growing. I love this kind of surprise! It's like discovering treasures in the soil.

Historically, my peppers never got big, and it's the same with eggplants.  Perhaps I need to add more compost to the soil. This year even my tomatoes stay small. Fortunately, I am also growing gooseberries, and they are doing extremely well with lots of flowers. Please Check back for an update on the gooseberry plants!

Sorbrante Ridge Regional Preserve Hike

Yesterday I picked up a free book from a pile of garage sale leftover. It's called The Dog Lover's Companion to the San Francisco Bay Area. I flipped through the book and found Sobrante Ridge Regional Preserve as the highest rated dog park in Contra Costa County. I thought Wildcat Canyon was really great. Can Sorante actually surpass Wildcat Canyon? I had to check it out for myself.

This morning I packed up my regular hiking gear along with another jar of peachy smoothie and hit the road with Kelsey in the back. El Sorante isn't far from El Cerrito, but as I drove down San Pable Dam Road, I had the feeling of going back in time. I was hoping the weather would stay overcast since I consider that as the most ideal weather for hiking. Unfortunately, the sun came out shortly before 10 A.M. as I arrived Sobrante Ridge. I was surprised to find a completely empty parking lot and empty park.

We saw a lot of lizards as we hiked up the hill. The temperature quickly became rather hot especially both Kelsey and I have dark hair. There is also very little shade in the open preserve. After hiking for 30 minutes, we took a water break under a big tree and then turned back. Compare Wildcat to Sorbante Ridge, I like Wildcat better for its varied scenery. At Sobrante Ridge, it seemed it was the same view endlessly - dirt road with dry grass taller than I on both sides with occasional trees. I saw just one person walking with his 2 dogs, who arrived after I did. I prefer to see a few more people when I go hiking, and Kelsey likes to see more dogs, too.