A Journal of Urban Living

Mine lives where that cardboard “nuc box” is.  That nuc actually contains my bees:

And here’s the photographer post sting:

And here’s the proud new beekeeper:

I have them.

• Apples
• Strawberries
• Tangerines
• Snap Peas
• Kale
• Celery
• Spinach

Not too much today.

First off a little house keeping.  Anonymous reader R is complaining that this web log thingy isn’t all that exciting without pictures.  I blame the web 2.0 crowd.  Web 2.0?  Show me the RFC for that.

Anyhow, just to prove that yes, there was abalone for dinner the other night, well, here you go:

And that’s all that’s left.  It was……okay.  I think we’ll stick with their oysters.

And now on to the rack.  I’d mentioned previously a batch of beer.  Here it is just hours ago:

It’s now racked to a secondary fermenter.  It will sit for maybe a month.  It could stand to clarify out and I’m not convinced fermentation completed.  The yeast were about 18 months old.  The rest of the recipe was more or less:

• 7 lbs American 2-row
• 1 lb crystal malt
• American Ale liquid yeast
• 1 oz Cascade Hops
• 1 oz Fuggles Hops
• 0.5 oz Wilamette

I used a 2 step infusion mash this time.  I normally do a decoction mash but I didn’t feel like I had the four or so hours.  After a protein rest at 130F for 20 minutes I added 4 gallons of boiling water to get a nice 155F mash for 45 minutes, sparging with 4 gallons of 170F water.

The boil was 75 minutes.  the cascade half of the fuggles went in at the boil, the other half of the fuggles and the wilamette were used for flavor and aroma.  The primary fermentation was six days which is abnormally long but the yeast were so old.  The brew didn’t start bubbling until a couple days into the process.  When this is all over the beer will be kegged and I’ll make the next batch with 6 row barley (to avoid a stuck runoff) and livelier yeast.

It’s getting warmer.  The loquats are yellowing, the stone fruit have leaves, the citrus season is done, for us anyhow.  It’s time to think about the garden.  Actually, it may be a month late.  In what may be my fourth community garden in four different zones in the past seven years or so I feel like I need to relearn the planting schedule.  You can’t always start your peas on the Feast of Saint Joseph like we did when I was a child.  We actually planted them in November.

So here’s what I planted in a 50 flat container:

• 10 Tomatoes (a pack of mixed heirlom seeds from Fedco packed for the 2004! season)
• 4 Purple Beauty Sweet Peppers (from Territorial Seeds for the 2006 season when we were trying to have a purple garden)
• 3 Early Jalepenos (from Botanical Interests, packed for the 2007 season)
• 3 Sandia A Peppers (an Anaheim type from Lake Valley Seeds packed for 2007)
• 3 Swallow Eggplant (an early variety, again from Fedco for 2004)
• 3 Fairy Tale Eggplant (from Johnny’s for 2008)
• 2 Bush Delicata (2006, Territorial)
• 2 chives (the more I have the more I use, from Renee’s Garden for 2008)
• 4 Charentais Melon (from Lake Valley.  The “real” cantaloupe and no it’s not a rock melon, packed for 2005)
• 3 Shisho (Botanical Interests, 2008)
• 3 Trevisio Radicchio (Johnny’s, 2008.  I love bitter things)
• 3 Alibi Pickling Cucumbers (Territorial, 2006.  I was making cornichon with them but I can’t keep them crunchy enough.  This year we’ll use them as slicers if they come up)
• 6 Window Box Basil (Renee’s 2007.  I thought we had more seeds than that)

I like the idea of using up as many of the seeds as we can.  The Heirloom Tomato mix has been a reliable producer but at 5 years old I’m starting to worry.  And most of the mail order seeds have come from the north, be it Maine or Oregon.  We’ll see how our closer-to-tropical latitude treats anything that actually sprouts.

Today:

• Abalone
• Persian Cucumbers
• Limes
• Strawberries
• Butternut Squash
• Asparagus
• Red Ruby Grapefruit
• Fennel

We’ll see how those fit together.

I just stumbled across this:

If the passage of time were represented by popular specialty foods, we could call this the Year of the Castelvetrano Olive. They’ve become the nibble of choice at any cocktail party worth its salt.

• Beer – brewed Saturday. All grain-bitter. Next time we’ll use yeast that’s not past its (their?) expiration date.
• Bees – finished painting the hive. I just need to wax the starter strips. Oh, and I need bees
• Citrus – candied the remaining kumquats on Sunday. I’m not sure what we’ll do with them.  Sprayed the lemon with soap for an unknown pest.  I need to look at the extension site.
• Sprouts – started basil and cress micro-greens. Mustard sprouts.

We saw a swarm in a loquat tree on Echo Park Sunday.  The bees had decamped by the time I reached Kirk.