I am at my local neighborhood coffee shop and it’s the best. I’m trying to fake it till I make it to be fall I wearing boots and Valore pants, but it’s still iced coffee weather. I love that I have a little café right in my neighborhood and I definitely want to support them so they stick around! 
Our Asian pear is totally confused. It dropped all its leaves a couple of weeks ago and I thought that it probably got heat stressed. Turns out it dropped its leaves because it was getting ready to make some new ones. Apparently it thinks that our new milder weather is springtime and it’s leaving and budding out. I hope the new leaves harden off and don’t get snapped back by an early frost. C’est la vie.
I was just outside watering a few plants in the front and I spotted this lovely large praying mantis chowing down on a squirming honey bee. Nature is savage. Score one for team praying mantis
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It may be 92° out right now, I’m still super excited for Fall. Our long temperate makes it my favorite growing season. Out with the old and in with the new. The shortening days and cooling nights get me so inspired to plant lettuce and greens. Bring on the cruciferous vegetables! The snow peas I planted last week are already starting to come up. I’m so ready for fall. 
Years ago people planted tons of Spanish olive trees around town. They thrive in the dry arid climate and are beautiful trees. Sometime in the 80’s people decided that they made too much pollen and outlawed fruiting olive trees in Arizona. They made a hardy and productive tree illegal, I still can’t believe it. So now you can’t buy anything bu sterile olive trees in this state, but there are still many grand old olive trees lining the streets.
Usually they right then around October, but this year they all seem to have traded early and we’re ready to pack in September. I spotted two trees in the park near our house that were loaded with truth. The three largest trees had already been harvested by the time we got there. The little leak mom who came over to see what we are doing told us that she had seen Ethiopian emigrant women climbing the trees and their sandals picking all the olives. I felt a kinship with this tree climbing olive picking women. There were two smaller trees off to the side that we’re still laden with fruit. A couple of buckets and 6 foot ladders and we had all olives we needed.
The green olives will be brine cured and the slightly riper olives that are beginning to darken will be dry salt cured. Brine curing involved soaking the olives in salt brine and is what you are probably used to. Dry salt curing turns them into a soft, chewy, salty treat that’s totally different. They are almost the texture of a prune, but salty and olive-y. Delicious.
Radical Nurturance 