MoaBlog

Last night, Penny and London noticed a black widow spider in its web near the corner of the house. An insect similar to a dragonfly had flown into the web and gotten stuck, whereupon the spider came out and attacked the insect until it died. Penny took the top photo while London shone a flashlight on the web. Then, as they were coming back in the house, they saw a very large beetle on the front porch. The ruler is shown for scale, indicating that the insect's body was approximately two inches long, not counting its long legs and antennae. It appears to be a type of longhorned beetle. Click on photos to enlarge.

Today, on Memorial Day, Jeff's family put another coat of tan paint over the old white paint on their house. They had painted the first coat on Saturday. Over the next few days, they'll paint the trim, which was formerly forest green, with a new color of red-orange rust. The girls all helped with the project, even young Geneva (second photo), who will turn 2 years old later this week.

A truckload of sod was delivered to Jeff and Penny's house on May 4. Friends and neighbors came over that afternoon and installed the new grass in the area around the front, side, and back of the house. Now, nearly three weeks later, the grass is doing well. Jeff mowed the lawn for the first time on May 21.

Morning glory plants in Jeff's yard are blooming with purple blossoms. Geneva likes to smell (and taste) the pretty flowers.

This summer, there have been a lot of grasshoppers in the Moab area (and all around Utah). Sometimes, they even manage to make it inside the house, as seen here in Jeff and Penny's laundry room.

While mowing the lawn yesterday, Jeff accidentally ran over a softball, ruining it with the mower blade. The inside of the ball appears to be made of some type of artificial cork-like substance, which is covered by a stitched leather cover.

Saturday afternoon, Jeff and Penny installed a new fence around their chicken coop, to further protect their birds from predators. The chain-link structure is actually meant to serve as a dog kennel, but Jeff hopes to keep dogs out, rather than in.

Jeff's daughters have been raising these three baby chicks for about a month. The birds are now big enough to be outside on their own, so they were moved out to the chicken coop in the back yard last Saturday. The girls climbed inside the coop to play with the chicks. Within the next few months, the birds will start laying eggs.

Springtime has come to Moab as shown by these daffodils and narcissus blooming in Sam's backyard. Daffodils are entirely yellow and narcissus have a yellow center surrounded by white petals.

Virginia is enjoying the last of the summer roses. In milder climates like that of Moab, roses continue to bloom through autumn.

The trees in Moab are changing colors and leaves are falling. This tree is an especially vibrant reddish yellow.

Several men and boys came over to Jeff and Penny's house last week to help them with some much-needed yard work. They cut wood, burned a large pile of trash, hauled off metal garbage, and even fixed some shingles on the roof of the house. The entire project lasted only a couple hours, but a great amount of work was accomplished, much to Jeff and Penny's delight.

With help from his neighbor Jim, Jeff replaced the red primer bulb (seen in top photo) on his lawnmower the other day. The part, which cost around $2, pumps gasoline into the carburetor. Afterward, Jeff mowed the front lawn (bottom photo).

After about four or five years of growing, this almond tree in Jeff and Penny's yard is finally producing almonds. The key was to plant another almond tree nearby to serve as a pollinator. Both trees can be seen in the bottom photo.

Some flowers are beginning to bloom in Sam’s backyard. Because they are bulbs, daffodils and hyacinths bloom in the early spring before most other plants have even started to sprout.

One of the more obvious signs of spring is the many trees around town that are now filled with blossoms.

Jeff and Penny burned the plants in their garden over the weekend, in preparation for this year's planting. Some of last year's red pepper plants still had dried peppers on them. The flames created a mental image of "hot peppers"!

The local flower shop stocked up on Easter lilies in preparation for the Easter holiday this coming Sunday, March 23. The Christian holiday Easter is generally calculated as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. This year's Easter is the earliest one since 1913, and it won't be this early again for at least 200 more years.

The plant's Latin name is Lilium longiflorum. It can grow to a height of 1 meter, and typically blooms during the Easter season (March or April). The plant is actually a native of Japan, where it is known as テッポウユリ (Teppouyuri).

Penny has gotten an early start on her outdoor tomato garden this year by starting seedlings in a tray of potting soil and keeping a fluorescent light on them 24 hours a day. Both varieties have already sprouted and should be ready to transfer outside by the time the weather gets warm enough.

Many residents around town have been putting up elaborate Halloween decorations in anticipation of a big night of trick-or-treating on October 31. This local front yard is filled with dozens of decorations, including several inflatable figurines and a castle.

For the past few months, Jeff and Penny's front yard has had holes and tunnels dug into it by a pest that left the surface holes plugged up with dirt. After finding out that a pocket gopher was the likely culprit, they dug open one of the cavities and filled it full of water from the garden hose. The animal came to the surface and died. It was about 6 inches long (the size of a small rat) and had beaver-like teeth, plus claws for digging (bottom photo).

The apple tree in Jeff's yard is already filled with green apples, which will soon be ready to pick (top photo). The peach trees were not so lucky -- they fell victim to a late frost this spring and only produced a single fruit (middle photo). Also growing in the nearby garden are tomatoes and hot peppers (bottom photo).

Jeff's friend Craig gave him this azurite stone last night. Craig found it near Lisbon Valley, south of Moab. Azurite, an indicator of copper ore deposits, is one of two basic copper carbonate minerals that occur naturally, the other being bright green malachite. Azurite's chemical formula is two parts copper carbonate to one part copper hydroxide (2CuCO3 * Cu(OH)2).

A new greenhouse was recently constructed on the school property of an elementary school for 4th through 6th graders. The kids will use the greenhouse to grow plants and to do science experiments, just as the four 5th-graders in the bottom photo are testing wind and water erosion.

Now that autumn is here, Jeff and Penny's front yard is awash in the bright colors of various fall-blooming flowers, including wildflowers and roses.

Mary's parents gave Jeff and Penny two boxes of peaches last week, picked from a tree in their backyard. Penny spent the entire day Monday bottling the peaches (top photo). She peeled and cut up the fruit, packed it into bottles, added apple juice, and then sealed and sterilized the bottles by boiling them to seal their rubber-rimmed lids. The following day, she did the same thing to a box full of fresh Roma tomatoes that another neighbor had given her (bottom photo).

Members of the local high school football team showed up Friday afternoon to help lay about 20 pallets full of grass sod to create a new lawn for the elementary school in just over an hour. A sprinkler system will help keep the lawn watered until the grass can take permanent root in the soil underneath. The sod was grown about 100 miles away in Colorado and shipped to Moab via truck.

While driving around town last week, Jeff and Penny noticed construction employees getting rid of used bricks from a building that was being remodeled. They asked the person in charge if they could have some of the bricks, and received permission to take about 100 of them home in their pickup truck. They plan to construct a backyard drinking fountain using some of the bricks. The pipe is already in place, but they haven't yet bought any concrete or mortar.

Jeff was digging holes for new apple trees this morning when he noticed that two of his three chickens were roaming around in the family's garden plot (which still needs to be tilled and planted). He was reminded of the rather unusual Japanese sentence that translates as, "There are two chickens in the garden," namely: "Niwa niwa niwa niwatori ga imasu."

Now that the days are getting shorter, Jeff's four chickens are no longer producing eggs at the rate of four a day. Instead, he harvests an average of two eggs each evening. One of the chickens, however, lays double-yolked eggs on a regular basis (at least once a week).

Jeff and Penny picked a basket full of juicy plums from the tree in their front yard last night. They have also begun harvesting watermelons and tomatoes from their garden. They also have apple, pear, apricot, and almond trees, but their fruit is not yet ready to harvest.

Jacci's cat Blackstuff (in lower right of top photo) enjoys spending time in the backyard. Jacci's vegetable garden includes tomatoes, hot and sweet peppers, pole beans, and many herbs. All of the flowers are either native to the Moab area or adapt well to the hot and arid desert climate. The bottom photo shows two types of flowers in Jacci's garden: yellow Gloriosa daisies and a rusty red flower variety commonly called Blanket Flowers.

Orange globe mallow (Sphaeralcea munroana) is a drought-resistant, perennial plant that grows abundantly during the spring in the Moab area and in the surrounding desert. Because of this year’s wet spring, the plant has sprung up in large colorful swatches all across the hills and valleys. Some Moab residents grow this plant in their yards because it is hardy and requires little care, but at the same time doesn’t crowd out other plants.

The Sego lily, a well-known Utah wildflower, blooms in mid-May on Jeff’s property each year. It was named Utah’s state flower in 1911, partly because of its beauty and partly because early Mormon pioneers had eaten the flower’s bulbs during the early 1850s, when food was scarce in Utah due to a crop-devouring plague of crickets. Sego lilies (Calochortus nuttalli) can have white, lilac, or yellow flowers. They typically grow six to eight inches high on open grasslands and rangelands.

Mary has a collection of lawn ornaments in her backyard. Pictured at top are two friendly looking frogs. The bottom photo shows one of three plastic flamingos. Mary's other yard decorations include a cast-iron squirrel and a small turtle.

It might seem too early to plant tomatoes, even in the desert of southern Utah; however, some gardeners in Moab use a device called a “Wallowater,” which allows them to plant tomatoes in early April. The device is made of plastic tubes filled with water. The tubes create a warm insulated mini-environment for the plants, thereby protecting them from frost and allowing them to grow more quickly than they would otherwise in the colder temperatures of spring. The plant in the bottom photo already sports one tiny green tomato along with several blooms.

Early spring flowering plants have been blooming in Christy’s yard. The top photo shows her forsythia, a deciduous shrub that bursts forth in a shower of golden flowers in early spring, even before the plant’s leaves appear. Forsythia, which originated in China, are now widely popular around the world and can grow until they are 3 meters tall and 5 meters across. Christy planted this one in her backyard last year. The other photo shows Christy’s grape hyacinths, a cobalt-blue type of muscari that is so named because its flowers resemble an upside-down cluster of grapes. “When these flowers bloom, it’s time to start getting the garden ready for planting peas, spinach, and radishes,” notes Christy.

Although spring has not yet officially arrived, several of the plants and flowers in Yoko's yard have already begun to bloom. The top photo is yellow daffodils, the purple flowers in the middle photo are snow crocuses, and the ones in the bottom photo are Dutch irises.

The new trampoline that Jeff’s family received for Christmas was destroyed in a windstorm the evening of December 29. Fortunately, there were no injuries, as no one was nearby at the time it blew away. After being lifted up by a strong gust of wind, the heavy trampoline (12 feet in diameter and over 9 feet high with the safety enclosure) blew across the backyard, hit and broke a kitchen window, then sailed across the street, where it damaged a neighbor’s garage door. The top photo shows Jeff’s kids jumping on the trampoline the day it was assembled (December 24). The bottom photo (taken five days later, on December 29) shows the damaged trampoline in a heap on the neighbor’s driveway.

Many families in Moab (and across the country) like to decorate their homes for the Christmas holiday season. The most commonly seen home decoration is white or colored lights strung from the eaves, but some folks like to add snowmen, Santa Claus, reindeer, nativity scenes, and even bears! It’s also common to see stings of colored lights on bushes, trees, fences, and other objects around the yard.

Poinsettias, with their bright red blooms, are common indoor Christmas decorations in the United States. Every year during the Christmas season, many people buy the plants to decorate their homes and to give them to friends or family as gifts. Not many people know that poinsettias are actually native to Southern Mexico. They were imported to the United States around 1830 by the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Joel Roberts Poinsett, who grew the plants at his home and then sent them to friends and fellow botanists. The practice of giving these plants to friends and family has continued to this day.

Jeff and his family are raising chickens in their backyard. A couple of years ago, they designed and built their own coop. A neighbor’s dog killed the first batch of chickens in 2002. Then, in the spring of 2004, they tried again with a dozen newly hatched chicks. Of the four that have survived to adulthood, only one is a hen. The birds like to eat mixed grain (mostly corn) and fruits, especially watermelon. “The hen used to lay an egg just about every day, but she no longer lays them regularly because it gets so dark and cold in the wintertime,” says Jeff.

Sam’s 13-year-old son John recently picked several small pumpkins from the family’s backyard garden. Sam’s family also harvested potatoes and onions. Other DHC U.S. Office staff members have also harvested vegetables over the past couple of months. Yoko grew perilla, tomatoes, chili peppers, and eggplants. Jeff’s garden yielded several watermelons, along with tomatoes, corn, pumpkins, squash, green peppers, and green beans. Pumpkins are commonly baked into pies and topped with whipped cream. You can also roast pumpkin seeds in the oven to make a delicious snack.