The traditional madeleine is a small French cake baked in a special pan with shell-shaped indentations. These are a savory version that make an excellent hors d’oeuvre. I like to make them ahead because they freeze well. Just reheat at 350°F. for 8-10 minutes. These are a tasty use of the zucchinis from your Sunnyvale garden. servings makes 4 dozen …

Growing zucchini (Cucurbita pepo) in a garden is very easy and a zucchini plant can produce large amounts of delicious squash. How to Plant Zucchini When planting zucchini, you can plant them either as individual plants or grouped on hills. How you grow zucchini squash is up to you, based on how many zucchini plants you intend to grow and …

The quintessential early bird, American Robins are common sights on lawns across North America, where you often see them tugging earthworms out of the ground. Robins are popular birds for their warm orange breast, cheery song, and early appearance at the end of winter. Though they’re familiar town and city birds, American Robins are at home in wilder areas, too, …

A handsome chickadee that matches the rich brown bark of the coastal trees it lives among, the Chestnut-backed Chickadee is the species to look for up and down the West Coast and in the Pacific Northwest. Active, sociable, and noisy as any chickadee, you’ll find these birds at the heart of foraging flocks moving through tall conifers with titmice, nuthatches, …

If you want to cover your fence FAST, the best choice would probably have to be Morning Glories. Morning Glories are very fast growing plants, that depending on the species, may be annual or tender perennial vines with light green, heart shaped leaves. They produce a non-stop show of large, blue, pink, purple, red, or white trumpet shaped, sometimes fragrant …

When we decided to fill in the swimming pool in our backyard I had to first drain the pool. The Little Giant submersible pump worked well. It pumped at 1200 gallons per hour. It took 10 hours to drain the 12,000 gallon pool. I also used the pump during the torrential rains of 1995. The interior courtyard on the Bahl …

This colorful salsa uses Purple Tomatillos and Purple Cayenne Chiles. Of course, if you close your eyes, it tastes the same as green tomatillo salsa 🙂

Cape mallows produce lots of flowers for most of the growing season. The cape mallow (Anisodontea capensis) is an evergreen, shrub-like plant that produces abundant flowers during most of the growing season. The plant does well in sunny locations and makes a nice accent in a border or near a patio. Cape mallows can also make good container plants when …

Each of your pots should have a drainage hole. If the hole gets clogged, your pot will retain all the water and drown your plants. See the featured image. Ignore the myth of placing gravel or broken pottery over the hole. It will just clog it up.

This Lemon chicken recipe produces a flavorful and  moist chicken. I use the Meyer lemons from my Sunnyvale garden as well as garden herbs like oregano, sage, rosemary, and marjoram. A Meyer lemon is a cross between a lemon and an orange.