Under the Solano Sun

It's raining, but it's not water from the sky. It's fruit drop from my Satsuma mandarin tree. Small, immature fruit is littering my patio and my garden bed. The official name for this event is June Drop, but it can happen May though July. For some reason, it seems worse this year.

In March 2022 we were able to visit relatives in Tampa Bay, Florida. One day we visited a lovely open-air marketplace in nearby St. Petersburg. Walking back to the car, we passed a lovely, massive tree with sturdy branches that came off the main trunk close to the ground.

Mangave are a fairly recent phenomenon. An exciting hybridization of Agave and the former genus Manfreda. (Manfreda is now considered part of Agave) In 2005, Tony Avent and Carl Schoenfeld coined the term x Mangave to describe two plants growing at Yucca Do Nursery in Texas.

Every year I like growing a variety of a vegetable I have never grown in the past. It gives me the opportunity to grow and taste something new. This year I decided to grow Japanese cucumbers (Cucumis sativus).

In May 2019 I had just finished up my last round of chemotherapy for aggressive breast cancer, I was facing radiation and many more surgeries....you could say I was a feeling bit down.