I guess Donna wasn’t busy enough with her activities which include Tennis Club, Pickleball Club, golf, Viewpoint Concert Band and her work providing dog walking and companion care for some elderly residents here at Viewpoint Golf Resort. So, she took up another hobby.

She built a raised garden bed from a kit made by a company called Vego. She did most of the work herself with only a little assistance from me. She used quarter-inch mesh screen to line the bottom of the bed – this will prevent critters like gophers or moles from entering the bed. The she filled the bottom with garden waste – broken branches, leaves and other plant matter. This was mainly just filler to take up space without spending money on soil.

From there, she needed a higher quality garden mix to provide the proper consistency and mix of nutrients for her plants. For that, she bought some garden mix from Home Depot and then wanted to improve upon that. I found a place in south Phoenix called Arizona Worm Farm that was just the ticket.

Arizona Worm Farm is an interesting place and a great story of entrepreneurship. About five years ago a guy named Zack Brooks bought ten acres of land that was formerly a cotton field. He had a vision of running a farm that would be a zero-waste, self-sustaining enterprise that would provide sustenance for up to 10 families. That grew into a successful worm production facility that creates compost and soil enriched with worm castings as well as fruits and vegetables.

He developed relationships with various businesses that had a need to dispose of organic waste material. He gets wood chips from landscapers that would otherwise get sent to landfills. He gets vegetables that are past their sell-by date that would normally be thrown out as garbage. He also gets things like melon rinds, carrot tops and other vegetable matter from companies that process vegetables into pre-cut vegetable packages. Finally, he has sources for horse manure from reputable stables that only feed pesticide- and herbicide-free material to their horses. He raises chickens and uses chicken manure as well.

The materials are combined and used as feed for worms, which in turn, provide the worm castings – a polite term for worm poop. This is a very nutrient-rich plant food. He sells about 60,000 worms locally to gardeners per week as well. We went to the worm farm on a Saturday morning to take a class called Gardening 101 which was led by the garden manager and head grower, Leslie. It was 90 minutes well-spent. Donna took copious notes. The cost of the class was $25 and included me as Donna’s guest. It also included a half gallon box of worm castings and four vegetable starts.

The transformation of an abandoned cotton field into a garden and desert oasis in just five years is amazing. The ten acres have about two acres taken up by various buildings and the rest is either dedicated to compost rows or gardens with fruits and vegetables.

Donna bought compost along with about 300 red wiggler (sometimes called red wriggler) worms. She finished filling her raised bed on Sunday and it has an in-ground compost tub which is a worm feeding station. We keep vegetable scraps in a container in the kitchen which we will transfer weekly or so into the compost tub and mix it with paper, cardboard and leaves. The worms will digest this stuff and transform it into plant nutrients. I find the whole concept amazing. I’ve watched several You Tube videos describing the process.

The worms can move freely in and out of the in-ground compost tub through holes in the sides. They will travel about in the raised bed, aerating the soil and depositing nutrients. They return to the compost tub to feed.

I cut a water dripper hose to the right length to fit the bed and we set it up on a timer. When the timer detects sunrise, it runs the dripper for 15 minutes to deeply and gently water the raised bed. In about six to eight weeks, we should have fresh tomatoes. Donna already has basil ready to harvest and she has sugar snap peas started along with a few other vegetables. She has marigolds in the corners of the bed to keep pests away. This should keep Donna busy.

Meanwhile, I’m continuing to work at learning astrophotography. Tuesday I made another attempt at Jupiter, but atmospheric conditions had layers of wind and temperature gradients that made it very difficult to get a sharp image. I tried a different approach. I used the William Optics Z73 refractor. It has a focal length of 430mm and much lower magnification than my Celestron 8SE which has a focal length of 2032mm. I used a 2X barlow on the Z73 to double the focal length and thus the magnifaction to try to capture Saturn and Jupiter. The results were still unsatisfactory. The only thing I can do is keep trying and hope for better conditions as the weather cools.

I turned my attention to the moon. I removed the 2X barlow and used the Z73 at its native focal length. By using the maximum sensor area of the ZWO ASI678 astrophotography camera, I could just fit the entire surface of the moon in the image. I photographed the moon on successive nights – I’m amazed at the changes in the moon view that occur in 24 hours.

The moon is waning – there is less surface area illuminated each day. I had a better exposure balance on the second night – I’m learning.

In the detail view above, the upper left has the craters Hercules and Atlas. Hercules is about 44 miles in diameter and Atlas is about 54 miles. Below them is the upper portion of Mare Serenitatis. Ancient astronomers named the dark, smooth surfaces of the moon mare (plural is marie), Latin for sea. They mistook the dark, smooth appearance as water. Actually they are large basaltic plains, the result of volcanic activity on the moon long ago. On the right side of the picture is the terminator – the name for the line where the illumination stops and the remainder of the surface is hidden in shadow. That is the Taurus mountain range right at the terminator.

I should mention the feature near the bottom right of the full moon picture. It’s the crater called Tycho with what appears to be rays radiating from it. These rays are formed by the ejecta created when an object collided with the moon forming the crater. We only see the rays on relatively young craters. As they age, the space environment with space dust and heavy doses of radiation darken the rays until we no longer see them. Meteors or asteroids collide violently with the moons surface – there isn’t an atmosphere there to create friction to slow them down or burn them up. The crater Tycho is relatively young – it was created around 100 million years ago!

Donna prepared a new recipe for chicken thighs called One-pan chicken thighs with coconut creamed corn. This recipe is a keeper for sure.

Sticking with the chicken thigh theme, she made another new recipe with boneless chicken thighs called skillet chicken with turmeric and orange. Served with steamed rice and sauteed spinach, it was delicious.

The weather has cooled in the last week – daily highs are upper 80s to low 90s. This is making outdoor pickleball a little later in the morning possible. Unfortunately, most of the pickleballers here in the park stiil want to start at the crack of sunrise. My astronomy sessions and early morning pickleball are at odds with each other – one has me up late, the other demands early rising. I enjoy outdoor pickleball more than the indoor game. I can see the ball better, it doesn’t skid on the floor and the level of play here at Viewpoint is generally higher than the recreation center.

We’re looking at a rainy weekend with thunderstorms possible. Donna turned off her automatic drip irrigation last night. It’s starting to rain as I type this.