Picture This Contest - April 2010

Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself with my new camera, but I thought I'd enter this picture in this month's  Gardening Gone Wild picture contest.  It's "Peas In My Heart" from my last blog post - What on Earth is it all About?

What on Earth is it all about?

Earth Day is the 22^nd of April. 

Thanks For Today and other fellow garden bloggers are sharing ways to garden sustainably in honor of Earth Day and this is my contribution. Please visit Jan's blog,  Thanks For Today to see links to other posts honoring Earth Day.

I’m not sure if it’s an American thing or a world wide event –though when you consider that the “World Series” is a tournament involving only America and Canada, I’d be forgiven for being confused about these things here.  That said, I can’t ever recall celebrating Earth Day when I lived in Ireland.  It’s likely that given it’s proximity to St. Patricks Day, we were all still in recovery.  Add to that the fact that Earth Day is not about swilling the grog, so yeah, maybe we missed it!

So what does it mean to me?  I like to think I live everyday as if it were Earth Day.  I’m converting my front garden to be a native plant garden so that I might conserve biodiversity, won’t waste resources (water, fertilizers etc) and hopefully provide a habitat for the local wildlife.   I run the gauntlet of the Drosophila flies and compost my kitchen waste.   Every week, I take reusable carrier bags with me to the supermarket and feel embarrassed if I’m packing my shopping into a Lucky Supermarket bag when I’m in Safeway’s and vice versa –silly I know- the bigger issue being that I’m not WASTING plastic!   I drive a small (by American standards!) car and I turn off lights, computers and appliances when not in use.  I hang my clothes on the line to dry and my dinner guests get cloth napkins.  As things go, I’m a tree-hugger!

At least, I believe in trying my best to be environmentally friendly for more than just that one day of the year.

So, what can I do for Earth Day that I’m not already doing or attempting to do….

As the Christian Brothers hammered into the Catholic school children back home, in a previous millennium, (sadly, in some cases quite literally!) the key is EDUCATION.

So hold on to your hats, here it comes!

Basically, I wanted to know what is Earth Day, who started it and when.

What is Earth day?

Earth Day was designed to promote environmental awareness based on the idea that everyone on our planet deserves to live in a healthy, sustainable environment.  Basically, they want to engender in us an appreciation of Earth. 

Ok, that’s an easy one, especially at this time of the year.  Have a look at these photos I took of California’s native wildflowers and tell me you are not inspired.

Wildflowers - Slideshow

It’s heartening to think that someone thought to highlight the wonders of our planet.  Sometimes it’s easy to go around with our eyes closed to the beauty of our world, especially when we are wrapped up in the rat race, living between car to office to inside our own homes, struggling to get through our busy days.

But STOP! 

It’s still there - waiting patiently for us to take notice - the trees, the sky, the mountains, the ocean.  For some lucky people, it’s right outside their windows.  You’d be surprised what you might find in your own back yard.  This fence lizard poses for me regularly - right in my backyard!

Increasingly people need to make a journey to reconnect with their planet.  That is the beauty of Earth Day.  It reminds us that it’s alive, we haven’t strangled all of it, yet, and we need to nurture what’s left. 

Just over the hill from where I took this picture is the land fill site for San Jose.  This is why we don’t want it to spread!

The “who” and the “when” of Earth Day totally intrigued me.  The Earth Day that we celebrate now was started by US Senator Gaylord Nelson.  Despite being saddled with a rather unfortunate name, he decided he had bigger and better issues to pursue.  Frustrated by political inertia on environmental policies, he announced at a conference in September 1969 that the following Spring there would be a “nationwide grassroots demonstration”.  You can get the story in his own words here.

So far so good - BUT THEN - I came across another article about a DIFFERENT Earth Day.  Curious and curiouser!

So, it turns out that in fact, the founder of Earth Day was John McConnell.  He even wrote an Earth Day proclamation and suggested that Earth Day be held on the spring equinox (March 20/21) starting in 1969.  So that puts him ahead of ole Gaylord! 

Isn’t it typical that there couldn’t even be a consensus of when Earth Day would be and that some politician just ran roughshod over what had already been established a year earlier?  

Mind you, if Earth Day was on March 20^th the Irish would be still hung over from the 17^th.  Maybe that’s why they changed it to April 22^nd!

The bottom line is that this is the human condition – we, each of us, have different ideas, different faiths, different loyalties, different wants but we all share basically the same needs and the SAME PLANET!  And for this reason alone, we need to work towards the SAME GOAL – a healthy, happy, home.

So I say for Earth Day, get outside, look around, do some gardening – feel the planet in the palm of your hand.  After a good day in the garden, you too can have peas in your heart! 

Byddi Lee

Guest Gardens #1 – A Fusion of Relaxation and Function

When the gardening classes ended, a bunch of us got together and decided to start a gardening club, taking turns to host it in our gardens once a month, where we could continue the exchange of ideas and swap seedlings.  Judy, who sat beside me in class, (with the escaping worms!) offered to host the first meeting and kindly agreed to me posting her garden as a “Guest Garden” on my blog.  I also discovered that she makes the best sangria I’ve ever tasted!  Of course, sangria and snacks are an important element of any gardening club!

Judy's garden is like the grounds of a luxury hotel.  Somewhere you could go on holiday, tranquil and relaxing.  She has a good sized pool, one that you can actually swim a proper length in before needing to turn.  Last year, whilst looking for the new house, I saw so many houses with pools that were too short to actually swim properly in.  In many cases it was a choice between pool or garden.  Judy is blessed by both!

Another striking feature of this property, is that it overlooks a golf course and the Santa Cruz Mountains beyond that.  This, Judy admitted, was the feature that sold the property to them several years ago, not the actual house!  They take full advantage of their beautiful view with understated iron railings that, for the most part, you look through but are themselves really stylish.

It reminds me of something from a holiday brochure.  Wish you were here?

But Judy’s garden is not just about a beautiful lawn, pool and view, though for many that would be plenty!  Judy’s garden is also a working garden, providing food for her family.  Along the side of her house she has three raised beds where she grows vegetables.  It’s a great illustration of how a smaller space can be effectively put too work. 

 The first raised bed has strawberries and onions in it right now.  This prompted a useful discussion for our meeting on “How do you know if you have planted too sparingly or too much in your garden?”  We reckon start bare and then keep adding stuff in slowly.  If it starts to suffer, then you know it’s too much.  The problem with too little is that you are leaving room for weeds, and you could be growing something edible instead!  As Judy wisely said, “Gardening is not an exact science!”  All comments are welcome on any aspect  of gardening advice...

The middle raised bed looks like the herb garden.  Notice here the drip irrigation system – a necessity in this part of the world.

There is rosemary in the bottom left corner.  I have a nicer close- up shot of that.

Judy has also planted cilantro (coriander to Europeans), and lettuce and more onions at the other end.  We talked about when you should harvest onions.  Judy pointed out that the instructions on the seed pack weren’t very helpful - “Harvest when ready.”  But how do you know when onions are ready?  They’re in the ground and once you dig them up that’s that!  I did some research, and the general consensus is that you can harvest them when the tops start to wither and fall over, i.e. die back.  So, I hope that answers your question Judy.  Also, various sources suggest leaving them to dry out a little too.

Judy’s third raised bed is choco-block full of amazing broccoli!  This just goes to show that giving your seedlings some space can have its dividends.  These are twice the size of mine (same type) which were squeezed between my peas and my kale.  Judy can eat broccoli every night of the week at the minute!  A great crop.

One of the things I love about Judy’s garden is how she has utilized the space (and how tidy it is compared to mine!) with ingenious ideas or simply ideas that leave you smacking your head saying, “Why didn’t I think of that!”

She brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “sack of spuds” with these grow-in-the-bag potatoes.  It also means that she won’t lose potatoes in the soil and have surprise potatoes the following year!

I loved how she took advantage of the wall to support her sugar snap peas!

And for ground cover in her side beds, she is using a plant that is attractive and gives one of my favorites – strawberries!  Keeping them in narrow beds limits their growth so that they don’t take over completely.

Judy is also the proud mommy to baby tomato seedlings.  Aren’t they adorable!

She also has the most unusual double petaled (I'm sure there is a more technical name for this!  Please comment if you know - I'm still learning.) tulip that I have ever seen.

It was a lovely afternoon - sunshine, sangria (did I already mention the sangria?) and excellent company.  It’s a great way for someone like me, setting down roots of my own, to meet interesting, like-minded people. 

We had a good laugh at how becoming a gardener changes our perspective on things.  We get excited about manure!  One of the girls (I must remember to check with them all if I can use their first names in future blogs!) shared a source for chicken manure.  Judy said that until a few years ago she’d never imagined she’d be so happy to get that link!  A germinating seed makes our day and we are all getting excited about a forthcoming field trip to the Yerba Buena nursery!

People say “If I won the lottery I’d…”  Well, I have a garden - I’ve already won the lottery…and with my hand in the soil, like Scarlette O Hara, I too say, “As God is my witness, I’ll never go hungry again!” (Especially with Safeways down the road for backup!)

Byddi Lee

Heavenly is a place on Earth!

“Oh baby, do you know what that’s worth?”  $88 dollars a day!  That is the cost of the lift ticket to Heavenly, California.

In my opinion, there is no such thing as a ‘bad’ ski resort.  Even a snowy mountain with no lifts is a good place to ski.  These days, people pay more to cat-ski and heli-ski in these places, so a bad ski resort is just a mountain that gets no snow.  But then you can hike, bike or maybe even kayak down it – so maybe I should say there is no such thing as a bad mountain – though perhaps that newly awakened, sleeping- for-200-years volcano in Iceland could be classed as ‘naughty’! 

So, now that I’ve established that mountains are generally good, lets couple their magic with lakes and deserts, and hey presto – Heavenly Ski Resort!  

Heavenly has some of the best ski mountain vista that I’ve ever seen.  Skiing down from the top of the Sky Express, it is possible to see Lake Tahoe on one side and the Nevada desert terrain on the other.  On a sunny spring day, it's worth taking of the skis and walking to some of the views, though be careful, roped-off areas are usually roped-off for a very good reason, a fact I discovered in my very early ski days and better left for discussion in a future possible blog – “Ski disasters and extremely close shaves!”

Like all the North American resorts that I’ve experienced to date, (Tahoe area and a whole bunch in British Columbia, Canada) once you leave the base area you are on the mountain and that’s it.  Unlike the European resorts, that have restaurants, cafes and chateaus from the highest peaks scattered all down the mountainside, allowing the skier to “warm up” at any stage of their journey, the North American resorts tend not to have facilities up the mountain.  Why?  I’m not sure.  Do I like it?  No.  But for conservation reasons, it may be a good thing.  It also tends to give the skier a keener sense of being “at one with the Mountain”!  (Did I really use this phrase?  I seem to remember a million years ago slagging a spaced out snowboarder for talking like that – Oh well, maybe California is rubbing off on me – though the snowboarder was Austrian and full of schnapps!)

When writing about resorts, I think about what’s important to me as a skier.  Navigability is high up there after the obvious, snow quality, lift system, variability of terrain etc.  Steepness is not a concern unless there are simply no escape routes down for less proficient skiers, or for me when I’m feeling lazy, which happens a lot these days.  And not having enough challenging runs doesn’t apply – I enjoy the easy carving stuff as much as the adrenalin pumping thigh burners on those crazy steep runs which we affectionately call “brown” runs!

In California, having a car is essential to getting to the piste if you are going to go to more than one resort.  If you are going to stay put for more than a few days you’ll need to ski the large resorts.  When I lived in Ireland a ski trip lasted a week.  We went to one (usually European) resort and did the package deal thing.  Your price included a transfer from the airport to the hotel.  You never needed to rent a car, and the hotel was chosen based on proximity to the lifts and the bars.  Apres Ski is HUGE in Europe.  You can even go for a pub crawl down the slopes.  Not so here.  And maybe that’s a good thing – at least my liver thinks so!

The three largest resorts are Heavenly,  Squaw Valley and Northstar. 

Heavenly is in South Lake Tahoe.  Whilst you can stay in some of the more expensive luxurious accommodations, like the Marriot at the Gondola base, South Lake caters for all pockets.  There is an abundance of low cost (low quality) accommodation.  Divided by the California/Nevada Stateline, you can choose to stay in Nevada and avail of the casino’s and their cheap accommodation too.  Smoking laws are pretty slack in Nevada so we tend to stay in the Holiday Inn Express on the California side.  It is a reasonable price and provides a solid, good standard I've come to expect from Holiday Inn.  

In general, South Lake is very busy, even during the week.  It tends to attract a young college crowd and it can be noisy at night.  Compared to the rest of the Tahoe area, it feels somewhat tacky – South Lake Tacky!  It is as if Heavenly is just so good that the town doesn’t have to put in much effort to attract its clientele.  They’ll go there – guaranteed. 

The Heavenly Ski area is big.  Like the town, it runs from California to Nevada.  I get a kick out of the signs - “Welcome To…” either Nevada or California depending on your direction.  This photo was taken in Janurary 2006.  It snowed the whole time and we skied the entire time in waist deep powder, though we didn't see the view until we returned the following year!

The Stage Coach Lodge, on the most extreme Nevada side (left as you view the piste map or trail guide, as the Americans call it) is a nice place to get a bite to eat though the chair lift out of here is really slow.  The Nevada side has lovely blue runs named after either chocolate bars or things from space, depending on how you look at it – Galaxy, Milky Way etc.

I’d avoid the Gondola from the village, if you can.  The dismount area is really flat and there is a fair bit to walk to the nearest run or lift.  If you only have one day for Heavenly, start at California Lodge, go to the top of Sky Express and descend on the Nevada side first.  Explore that area then make your way back to the California Lodge side (skipping the Gondola area in the center).  One day in late December 2006, the year after we had skied in blizzard conditions for the best part of a week, my husband and I were lucky enough to catch sunset and moon rise from Ridge run back to California Lodge.

Another of my favorite runs is Powder Woods on the California Lodge side.  On the piste map it is blue.  The sign at the top says it is black.  Gradient wise it is blue, but the trees upgrade it to a black.  It is not groomed, so it is like skiing off piste.  You can take a new line through Powder Woods each time you ski it and never do the same line twice.

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We took timeout to experiment with the new camera too.

We stayed in Squaw Valley in January 2010.  This resort is on the western side of the lake, a beautiful 50 minute drive north from Heavenly, past the spectacular Emerald Bay.  We had ski-in-ski-out accommodation at the Red Wolf Lodge.  The accommodation was very expensive (over $200 a night) but gorgeous!  I love piste side accommodation.  It’s just so easy.  I was disappointed with the Squaw Ski Resort though.  The signage for the runs was bad, so we got lost often and felt glad that we could tackle whatever terrain we stumbled across, perhaps not gracefully, but we’d get down it.  I reckon it would be a nightmare for beginners!  

This is me resting after walking up to the top of a hill after the slope just ran out of steam.  It was supposed to be a blue!

The views were amazing the day we were there.  The lake, and only the lake, had a blanket of fog so that we could look down on the clouds.  

Squaw Village was nice.  There was a good range of places to eat and lots of little shops to potter about in - and a random giant chair !

We skied Northstar a couple of years ago.  I really liked it.  I thought it would be fantastic for families (though also expensive – but once you move away from South Lake Tacky everything is!), the resort is purpose built (most are, but this one is very nicely done) and there is an Ice rink, fire pits, cafes and shops in a bustling little center village.  It would be great to stay in this resort, if you could afford it, and just roll out of bed on onto your skis.  The lift is right there!  The intermediate runs are mostly off the Arrow Express and the back side of the mountain has a couple of fun but challenging bowls.  Plenty to keep most people occupied for a few days.

Some of the smaller, out of the way resorts are worth doing.  I really liked Mount Rose, a ski resort in Nevada, northeast of Lake Tahoe and very close to Reno - a good source of great value accommodation.  It has a homely, friendly feel to it and it really has a surprising range of terrain to offer.  At $65 for a day’s skiing it is great value for money. 

The smaller resorts tend to be cheaper.  Trying a new one each day is a great way to see the area.  You can even buy half-day tickets at a slight reduction – not half off, as the name may suggest.  If you are mad for freshies then that option is not for you.  If you are like my sleepy-headed husband, it’s a nice relaxing way to resort hop, have a ski trip and a holiday – from the girl who used to pride herself on being in the lift queue before the lifts opened and didn’t stop ‘til the last lift closed.  Once, on a school trip I was awarded a prize for being THAT keen – I was one of the teachers!  How sad.  And how times have changed...  

Byddi Lee