Late Bloomer Has Moved!

Late Bloomer Show has moved! It is no longer hosted by WordPress. Late Bloomer Show is now a full-service website, and I invite you all to come, visit, look around and download my FREE e-book, “10 Steps to a Great First Garden!”

Kaye’s new e-book, “10 Steps to a Great First Garden” FREE at http://latebloomershow.com/

18 pages of my colorful photos of veggies and critters, links, resources, and LBL’s, aka Late Bloomer Lessons, “10 Steps to a Great First Garden” is everything I’ve learned about growing food in my first year of gardening, distilled into one convenient downloadable PDF. All I need is your name and email address! Get it now!

I’ve been so busy since January with Season 2 of my web show “Late Bloomer” as well as writing this e-book, creating a new website, not to mention finishing up my winter garden and planting my summer garden, that it did not hit me till just now when I got a new follower on my old blog, that my old blog was even still out there, and more importantly, that my old followers have not found their way to my new site! Have no fear, every one of my original blog posts made the trip to the new website, and now all my “Late Bloomer” episodes are right there on my new site, as well!

Late Bloomer Show is now on Pinterest, Google+ and I’m having daily fun with Instagram. If all that wasn’t enough to keep me busy, Late Bloomer had it’s one-year anniversary last Monday, April 22, Earth Day! I celebrated by uploading my 25th episode of Late Bloomer! “Late Bloomer at Tomatomania!”

I welcome you to look around the new site. Please send me your feedback. Let me know you are still there! There are lots of exciting things to share with all of you. “Late Bloomer” will be hitting the road and filming episodes in Middle Tennessee next month! To receive my blogs and web show updates now, just fill in your name and email address at Late Bloomer Show and download my free e-book! Constructive comments are always welcome, and remember, it’s never too late to start growing vegetables!

One Mo’ Time! I won’t be posting to this blog anymore. All articles will be at http://latebloomershow.com/ Visit, sign up. I hope to see you there! And happy gardening! – Kaye

Maintaining the Winter Garden – New Episode!

Cold, wet days drive Kaye inside. Good thing the garden is planted. But, you have to venture out once in a while to thin seedlings, deal with pests and encounter wildlife. Check out Season 2, Episode 2 of “Late Bloomer,” “Maintaining the Winter Garden.”

Please Like and Share and Comment! Thank you! – Kaye

Season 2 of Late Bloomer Has Begun!

Please watch and share Season 2, Episode 1 of “Late Bloomer,” “Planting the Winter Garden.” Featuring the original guitar composition of “Late Bloomer’s” new composer, guitar man Jon Pileggi. I’m very excited to add Jon to our lean and creative Late Bloomer team!

I’ve been busy planting a garden, making Late Bloomer episodes, creating an e-book “The Late Bloomer Show’s 10 Steps for a Great, First Garden,” redoing my website, and dealing with my sprained ankle and all the other stuff of life. Sorry I haven’t been blogging lately, but I will get back to it very soon! Are you able to grow food in the winter? Thanks for stopping by! – Kaye

P.S. Did you watch the Super Bowl? My American Airlines commercial ran during the game. I play a waitress. I’d love to know if you see it. Thanks!

It Was in My Hand!!

I have so much to do, I don’t know where to start. I’m getting a little overwhelmed. Spraining the ankle on New Year’s Day didn’t help me get off to the roaring start I’d planned.

I took a cup of tea out to the garden at noon to evaluate and meditate. It’s amazing what happens when you just stop. And observe. I wasn’t sitting for more than a couple of minutes when neighbor C.L. grabbed his cane and rambled over. As he chatted a bit, I spotted a wandering Monarch caterpillar four feet away on the driveway. When they wander away from the milkweed plant, if they are full-size (fifth instar), that means they are looking for a good spot for their chrysalis. I like to keep track of them, so I will know when the butterflies emerge. I moved this one back to the lone milkweed plant 12 feet away, and it got interested in eating again.

I’ve lost a few cats, and the cold and wind has been brutal for them. I’ve had no luck relocating them inside, or outside, to what I consider a good spot for a chrysalis. They have a mind of their own. This one died while shedding its skin to form its chrysalis. I had just watered the carrot barrels right beside it, and it is wet. I hope I did not kill it.

Dead Monarch Caterpillar Shedding Skin for Becoming Chrysalis

Today it is 63 degrees. Tomorrow it’s supposed to be 73, and 75 degrees on the weekend. It has been in the 50’s during the day and dipping in the low 40’s at night. With wind. This makes a tough go for Monarch caterpillars. I have chrysalises that are not mature after almost two months!

I sat back down and mused about how fast some veggies grow, while others take much longer. Most of my winter garden was planted early to mid-November. Radishes and lettuce and one barrel of baby finger carrots are mature, while it will be another month or two for kale, cauliflower and cabbage, a couple of weeks more for Swiss Chard.

Baby Little Finger Organic Carrots

Winter Bor Green Kale

Copenhagen Market Green Organic Cabbage

I could harvest beet tops right now while they are tender, but I’m more interested in the beet root, which will be awhile. It’s so hard to say with the wild fluctuations in weather.

Beet Tops

I could make a big salad right now of spinach, arugula and red deer tongue lettuce. But, that would clean me out. I have about two big salads worth of greens out there.

Spinach Leaves

Red Deer Tongue Lettuce

So, Monday, I planted more lettuce, this time, organic Romaine. That’s a small row of snap peas behind it.

Row of Freshly Planted Romaine Lettuce

Nasturtiums have self-seeded through my beds, so I pull them out when they start getting in the way. I opened the driveway gate to drop a few in the green bin, and spotted this tiny, metallic blue beetle on the gate key pad. It looks like a drop of metallic blue paint, no more than 1/8 of an inch across. But, this one had a problem, and was opening the wings over and over to get them all folded back under the blue helmet. A little piece was sticking out. It scurried across a leaf and my hand. Since I’m a beginning gardener, everything is new to me (I had seen one last year), so I assumed it was common. After I shot video and took a few shots, I relocated it to a rose leaf.

Ladybird Beetle, Halmus chalybeus, family Coccinellidae

I sat back down and drank from my cup. Postponing the inevitable return to my office to work. I have so much to do, I don’t know where to start. So, I sipped a bit longer. Then, I came inside, and sent the beetle photo to Dr. James Hogue, Professor & Manager of Biological Collections at Cal State Northridge, in charge of their 60,000 insect specimen collection. He immediately responded:

“It looks like this is a ladybird beetle called Halmus chalybeus, family Coccinellidae. It was introduced from Australia over 100 years ago for bio-control of scale insects. I had not seen this beetle before, nor do we have any in our collection. If you run across one again, it would be a good catch that I would like for our schools collection.

The hard blue things are its first pair of wings that, in beetles, are modified as covers for the more delicate hind wings that are used for flying. These covers are called elytra.”

WHAT??? IT WAS IN MY HAND!! And I let it go. I ran back outside and searched, but it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. It was in my hand!! I’m kicking myself. I really missed my calling. I should have been an entomologist, instead of an actress!

Thanks for stopping by! What bugs are you finding in your garden? – Kaye

Growing Corn Curbside

Please watch and share my latest “Late Bloomer,” “Growing Corn Curbside,” the 20th episode and end of season 1! Also, the corn episode completes the corn, tomato and watermelon trilogy. Watch here, or higher resolution, including HD, on youtube.

Once again, I have to deal with my hard, clay soil, but, it was worth it. With corn this fresh, who needs to cook it?

What’s in store for Season 2? Well, more Monarchs, my winter garden, and lots, lots more! Thanks for your support! Comments welcome! – Kaye

My Seriously Flawed Hand Knit Sweater

There’s one thing about being laid up with a sprained ankle over the holidays (which have dragged into the first week of the new year): out come the knitting needles. I’ve been mad about knitting since I taught myself to knit and crochet when I was young. I recall distinctly when I put down my knitting needles. It was in 1985 and I had just finished this sweater.

1985 Angora Hand Knit Sweater with Vintage Buttons ©Kaye Kittrell

I could count on one hand the number of times I have worn this sweater. I sewed a pair of taupe wool gabardine culottes (which are WAY too small now), and bought some cool low-heeled taupe shoes on Park Avenue. I used to love to shoe shop in the shoe stores on Park and Lexington in the ’80’s. The buttons are vintage from my one and only favorite button store, Tender Buttons on 62nd (seen in “Julia & Julia” as a hat shop, can you spot it?), just off Lexington Avenue, up from Bloomingdales (which I didn’t like at all). Sometime I’ll do a post on my button collection.

I put down my needles in frustration over the hours I was spending knitting. (This sweater took a lot of time, PLAID?? What was I thinking?) I could sew a whole outfit in much less time than knitting a sweater, and much easier to correct mistakes. I made all my clothes in New York, because I wanted to wear designer fashions and I couldn’t afford to buy them. At the time, there were very few types of yarns and needles available (I was using straight needles back then, I only use circular now), so it wasn’t a great loss.

When one son entered the local Waldorf kindergarten in 2000 (a Rudolf Steiner school – Steiner originated biodynamic farming and very different educational concepts), I was advised by his teacher to start knitting again, that it would be good for him to see me working with handcrafts, since that is a big part of their early childhood curriculum. That’s all it took. I had not knitted in 15 years, and I started with a simple scarf. While I was MIA from the knitting world, it had gone through a revolution, and there is no sign of it slowing down. I found a yarn store I liked, and I was off to the races. I documented each item – scarf, hat, purse, animal, shawl, and of course sweaters, in this book – which I kept until I stopped shooting film in my point and shoot camera in 2006. I just counted 62 items. A sculpture I made in college stood in as a mannequin.

My hand knits are collected in this album from 2000 to 2006 ©Kaye Kittrell

These two were my only animals and I am particularly fond of them. I knitted these from left-over bits of wool, and stuffed with sheep’s wool, so they smelled very organic for years!

Anteater & Elephant Wool Hand Knits ©Kaye Kittrell

I made so many scarves, I burned out, and settled on sweaters. Since I have always sewn, finishing a sweater (sewing all the knitted pieces together at the end) has always been a source of pride. I was particularly proud of the construction of this sweater I made a few years ago. I think I’ve worn it twice.

Red Hand Knit Summer Sweater ©Kaye Kittrell

I fell in love with Rowan yarns and patterns and joined Rowan and started receiving their pattern books and bought their yarns almost exclusively. I changed knitting stores when my older son went to 7th grade at Brentwood School in 2003. Jennifer Knits is just across from the campus in Brentwood, and I always hit her annual sales (starting today!), and racked up enough yarn to keep me knitting two sweaters a year for the next ten years. Which brings me to the seriously flawed orange sweater.

Seriously-flawed Hand Knit Angora Sweater ©Kaye Kittrell

I’ve knitted three red-orange sweaters for summer, but this is my first winter sweater. I had bought the yarn on sale, which is always a risk, because you are buying an amount of yarn on sale, with no pattern to go with it. Jennifer offers a service to design you a pattern for yarn you buy at the store, but I often get a hankering to knit at night when the store is closed. I started this sweater a year ago, and had not touched it since I started my garden and Late Bloomer. Needing to elevate my ankle made me think to pull out the needles. I usually try to knit something that uses all the yarn. In this case, I kept changing the idea of the sweater till I had just a small ball left. Trouble was, the sleeves were too narrow at the top. I felt very clever knitting two long diamond pieces to add under the armpits. It took three nights to open up the seams, and knit and reknit these pieces till I had used all but about three feet of yarn, enough to close up the seems. The third night, I managed to get it all sewed up and seams finished off inside with all the yarn ends sewn in. Once angora yarn ends are sewn in, you will never get them out without cutting them off. Anyway, I felt this rush of a sense of achievement, folded up the sweater and went to bed. I had been working on finishing this sweater for three straight nights, so I’d had a lot of time to consider how I was doing it. But, almost the moment I laid down to bed, and relaxed my body, it hit me like a bolt that I had sewn in the diamonds the wrong way! That they had NOT eased the tightness of the sleeve seam after all! I was awake for two hours debating whether to try and correct it. But, I had no yarn, and chances were that I would cut a loop somewhere that was part of a piece and not the seam yarn and I would have a hole I could not repair. Being the perfectionist that I am (in all things except keeping my office neat), I couldn’t sleep knowing I would probably never wear it unless I tried to rip it open. I decided to think about it for a couple of days, and I knitted up a sweater from some chunky 3 ply alpaca wool that I’d had for years. I used every last bit of yarn and ran out without doing the collar! I wasted hours online trying to find the yarn, so it’s either finish it off without a collar, or rip the whole thing out and start over. The moral of this story is, unless you are an expert knitter (and I am not), don’t start a sweater without a pattern and all the yarn you will need.

Now, they say, in knitting, if someone standing five feet away from you cannot see a mistake, you leave it alone. But, I will know about the red-orange sweater. And likely, it will not be worn much more than the rest of the 26 I have knitted. And that’s way more than you probably wanted to know about my knitting! 🙂 Thanks for stopping by! – Kaye

New Year Garden News!

I’m so glad I got the garden planted when I did in November. December was unseasonably cold for Southern California, and wet. I made an heroic effort on November 30th, remembering the six months without rain, to capture rainwater during the first downpour since April.

Gutter with Rain

I ripped one gutter down pipe away from the house, and filled a 60 gallon L.A. city trash barrel, as well as all the plastic tubs from which I had just removed the Christmas decorations, and they all filled up within an hour. The problem was, it kept raining in December, so I didn’t need the water for three weeks! Christmas came and went and the decorations had to go back into the tubs, so I had to pour out half the saved water.

The weather, and the fact that there wasn’t much to do in the garden, kept me inside preparing for the holidays.

Stanford Sigma Chi and Friends

Since Stanford played the Rose Bowl, my son, Walker, invited his Sigma Chi brothers to stay at our house. They flew and drove in from all over. Our house is modest and there’s no guest room. Over four nights, we had 8, 12, 7 and 1 houseguest/s sleeping on various air mattresses and pallets on the floor. Here are most of the students off to the Rose Bowl, after a late New Year’s Eve celebration. You might have heard that Stanford won!

New Year’s Day night, while about 7 students were settling in, I dropped over to say “Happy New Year” to my neighbor, Zdena. She had just fallen on the dark steps at a friend’s house, and returned home and bandaged up her bloody, bruised leg. She was icing when I got there. I visited for a half hour and insisted she not see me out (she always does and turns the back step light on). Ironic, that, I went out in the dark and missed the bottom step, and fell and sprained my ankle! All that hoeing and digging and straining in the garden all year, and no injuries to speak of. I also lost the earpiece to my glasses, which I have searched for and not found. What an end to a celebratory holiday!

So, the ankle has kept me out of the garden except for short bits. It’s much better now, and I managed to get to an art opening in Culver City on Saturday (Donald Martiny at George Lawson Gallery, terrific!) after an all-afternoon inspiring, energizing and empowering meet-up with fellow Young Living distributors at a friend’s in Topanga Canyon. In addition to all that I am doing with acting and Late Bloomer and my garden, I am a distributor of the finest medicinal grade essential oils on the planet, Young Living. (more on that later)

So, it’s been busy and I have exciting plans for 2013! Checking on my garden today, here is what I found: 5 Monarch caterpillars on one nearly-bare branch, munching the last bits.

Five Monarch Caterpillars on One Milkweed Branch

My milkweed is all but gone, and I’m moving caterpillars around to feed on the little bit left. I’m hedging that they all make maturity before the last bite is consumed. I counted about 14 today. I moved one chrysalis into the house on a particularly windy night, as well as two caterpillars, both of which died trying to form their chrysalises. I have eight viable chrysalises outside.

I harvested a bowl of lemons today. It seems they all ripened at the same time. No lemons for a year, and now I have 25!

Bowl of Meyer Lemons

I pulled out a handful of small carrots from the two barrels. I need about 10 barrels to keep this family in carrots!

Baby Finger Organic Carrots

I have one small row of radishes and they are all pretty much ready to be picked. I need to plant more!

Home-grown Organic Radishes

As I was photographing the carrots, the resident flock of wild parrots flew over my head and landed in my neighbor, Gini’s, tall evergreen tree (can anyone help me identify this tree?). There were between 50 and 70 bright green parrots with black beaks. They are the Nanday Conure Parrots, and they are very sociable and like to hang with their group.

Nanday Conure Parrot Flock in Evergreen Tree

Now, I’m off to the Palisades Garden Club meeting. They are having a wildlife biologist come and speak, who takes much better insect photos than I do! Thanks for reading! Hope your new year is off to a great start!  – Kaye

Growing Watermelon – Episode 19!

I’m from the South, and there’s nothing I love more than corn, tomatoes and watermelon. I knew if I had a garden I had to grow all three. You’ve seen my tomato episode. Please watch and share “Kaye’s Watermelon Story” – Episode 19. Since I only had a 6’x6′ space, I had to grow baby watermelons.

If I had it to do over again, knowing what I know now, I would grow them in raised beds with trellises to save space. Hope you enjoy my little tale! – Kaye

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays – 2012

Christmas Eve Salad

Christmas Eve Salad from my garden.

Spinach, arugula, baby kale, baby finger carrots, Stupice tomato, Japanese pepper, cilantro, Meyer lemon, drizzled with raw olive oil with cracked pepper. Merry Christmas, everyone, all over the world!

Christmas Eve Salad, Homegrown