Is this Spring?

Today is a break between the series of storms that California has been enjoying(?) for quite some time now. And nothing else intruded on my Saturday, so I got in my standard long bike ride and then used the momentum (and dry weather) to tackle the first lawn mowing of the season and finish weeding the tiny strip of dirt between the sidewalk and the fence, while the ground is still damp and soft.

I have a strong suspicion that Someone (and I have no clue who) decided to do me a "favor" and sprayed weedkiller along that strip, because the weeds that were lush and green two weeks ago are looking very sad. (And it's not for lack of water.) Someone also did me a favor and did some patchy weed-whacking of the parking strip vaguely in the same timeframe. (Both the weeding and the whacking were on my tasklist, but kept being put off due to rain.)

I think I'm going to need to put a notice out on the fence explaining that I know they meant well, but I grow food plants right on the other side of that fence and I'd really appreciate it if they avoid poisoning me and could they please ASK before doing things to my property? (I should note that I am not an anti-weedkiller absolutist, but I use it very carefully and tactically. And *I* know where the food plants are.)

Today's yardwork has confirmed for me that getting some supportive boots for doing outdoor work was long overdue. I'd been trying to get by with cheap sneakers and the like, but my bum ankle is really unstable on uneven ground. Doing things like mowing on a slant were getting tricky. Ankle-high lace-up boots don't quite get me back to the equivalent of having a functional right leg, but they get me closer.

Produce of My Estate Calendar

If this series of posts is going to do any good for mapping out the garden year, I need to post more often!

Let's see... As a snapshot of where we are right now:
* The first blueberry is almost ripe. I'd guess maybe another week? Most of the blueberries are blooming, but only one is close to giving me fruit. Once it does, I'll need to check the map to record which variety it is.
* The artichokes are putting out very lush foliage but I don't see buds yet.
* I just finished processing the last of the Seville orange crop. (Harvest and processing has been going on for most of February and March.)
* I've been picking the kumquats a few at a time and there are still plenty on the tree. I suspect they'll keep on the tree for quite some time, so I'll probably leave a few to see if there's a limit.
* Lots of lemons on the tree, both the Eureka in the citrus grove and the Anonymous in the backyard. Both varieties keep well on the tree, though they do fall eventually.
* The Buddha's Hand citron are all ripe but I haven't picked them yet as I haven't decided what I'm going to do with them yet. (Also: see "a month and a half of processing oranges".)
* The redleaf plum has been flowering up a storm...but it's also been flowering *through* the storms which may affect fruit setting. The anonymous plum in the back is also flowering up a storm.
* Apricot is beginning to flower but the rest of the fruit trees are just fattening their buds.
* If I have the energy tomorrow, I need to plant the onion sets I picked up, which means I need to decide what's going in which bed and do any amendments I want to do. I'm not a very systematic gardener in that regard. The raised beds need topping up every couple years, and I rotate which bed gets the compost output. If I've been digging holes and the dirt is reasonably free of rocks and grass roots, I'll put it in the bed with the lowest soil, but more often it goes around the roots of the mulberry where I'm trying to build the level up a bit.

I've completed all the tree pruning (except that I still need to get the pros in to pollard the mulberry and I've decided to get a quote for removing the palm trees out front, rather than continue to struggle to trim them every year). The next big task is going through the formal garden and cleaning things up, tying up the roses and the berry canes, and continuing to work on transplanting the strawberries into their new dedicated beds. Eventually I need to do the Spring walk-through of all the irrigation lines, but it doesn't look like that's at all urgent. (Glances at weather app.)