Conadria fig tree with new buds

I don’t think I’ve written since I started my home orchard last winter with a fuyu persimmon tree and a conadria fig. The small, hardy fig produced five delicious figs in its first year and the persimmon leafed out — and later shed its leaves — but has not flowered. I have left off pruning this year to let the trees grow strong — I can always adjust their shape or height later.

My transplanted raspberry, an everbearing variety, is strong and healthy and bore small amounts of fruit from June until December. I’ll cut it back again when there is a significant break in the rain. The blueberry is flowering now in January, which may be a mistake on its part and the Olallie blackberry has pulled down all of its supports from the fence, which tells me I need to get stronger wire than old guitar strings (Sometimes I carry frugality too far).

Butternut Squash Harvest

The biggest harvest of the year is in, pounds and pounds of butternut squash, both ripe and green, that I got in before the welcome rain. I have been wiping the squash clean and treating it with vinegar and water. Right now it is all over my kitchen, on cooling racks and old wooden crates and on the floor. I put some small ones on the windowsill to see if they would color up indoors. If any of you farming types know a foolproof way to ripen under-ripe squash or if any of you genius cooks know how to make delicious things out of green butternut squash, I’d love to hear from you. And, of course, I’d be happy to share the harvest with any local Bay Area folks — just say the word.

Bronze lettuce seedlings.

When I was out weeding before the rain set in I discovered some bronze lettuce seedlings near the stepping stones that go to the shed. I removed some weeds to help them along and will get back to that when it dries out out there. My yard is pretty good at reseeding tomatoes, butternut squash, chard and kale on its own and I was delighted to discover a large patch of arugula where I had laid down a plant gone to seed. I am picking and eating arugula everyday in my January salads.

In completely unrelated news, some of you might remember a blog where I predicted transforming into a star. While that hasn’t happened, I did get my first radio play of my music. Here’s how it happened. Like many people, I was horrified when the American government started separating families who were coming to seek asylum, taking children away from their parents. What I did in response is imagine myself as a woman with children fleeing violence in my home country. I wrote a song called “The Border Song” and found someone to translate it into Spanish as “Canción de la Frontera.” My partner and I then hired backing musicians and recorded both versions, producing an E.P. (a music CD with just two tracks). The day that the E.P. arrived at my house I learned that “Folk Music and Beyond” on San Francisco’s KALW 91.7 FM radio was producing a show on songs of immigration. I contacted one of the DJs, who is a Facebook friend of mine. She contacted her colleague. He asked for MP3s of the songs, liked them, and played them both last Saturday. This thrilled me. If you read this tomorrow or Friday you can go to KALW.org and listen to the songs for free. If you miss that tiny window, don’t worry: I’m working on posting videos to YouTube and making the recordings available on CD Baby. I’ll let you know when those things happen, in addition to giving you garden updates. I’m busy learning marketing, p.r. and techie bits, with lots of help from my friends, germinating skills while my garden soaks up the January rain.