Adventures in Gardening

I had an inspiring conversation with Sarah Ramirez five days ago about urban agriculture, permaculture, and the shareable food movement. Inspiring, because Sarah spoke about her own garden (which sounds wonderful) but also about the social justice issues involved in this cause. Have we ever thought about the wisdom that the immigrant community holds regarding the growing and sharing of foods for sustainability? Can we tap into that wisdom in mutually beneficial ways?  Much to think about.

I, for one, am readying myself for the revolution, the apocalypse, the 11:11, the Maya prophecy, the tea-party uprising, or the Big-One...whatever inevitable catastrophic disaster may hit the Bay Area. Years ago, I thought that if we had a Katrina-level (or more recently a Japan earthquake level) event, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to have the capacity to sustain ourselves "off the land" but I shrugged it off given that we have so little so-called land to work with. (Recall my first entry that told of a paved over back yard). But I'm learning how to make do with even a little bit of land.

The backyard experiment is progressing. The beans have come up nicely, but everything else is a bit sluggish. The brussel sprouts are still wee-seedlings; the cantaloupe just started to grow past the seedling stage but I'm afraid that it, along with the watermelon, was planted a bit too late. Maybe not. By October, it is still summertime here so perhaps the extra growing time will be enough to harvest something. If not, then maybe next year. I've also planted scallions and garlic that are sprouting as well. Still to come: weeding the back strip of soil and planting a full herb garden. And mulching and nourishing our poor little peach tree that is not well, at all.

Neighbor's thriving walnut tree (red arrow)

Ultimately I want a nut tree (despite the local nurseries saying they don't do well here). I've got a neighbor who has a huge thriving walnut tree. I'm thinking we should plant pistachios and learned you need 2 trees (a male/female pistachio pair) in order to produce nuts. So the plan is to plant two trees in that patch...somehow. Why a nut tree? The survivalist in me imagines that if we are without access to the neighborhood Trader Joe's or Safeway or, God forbid, our muppie/yuppie Market Hall, then what would be a decent protein source? Nuts. (Maybe I'll progress to having chickens one day, but even they may be devastated and decimated by the cataclysm so a nut tree isn't such a bad idea...)

Speaking of emergency preparedness, tomorrow, my family (Alec, Sam, and I) will complete our emergency responder training with the Oakland Fire Department. For the past 5 weeks, we have participated in the CORE program (Communities of Oakland Respond to Emergencies), whose mission is to promote the spirit of neighbor helping neighbor. The underlying premise is that a major disaster will overwhelm city agencies leaving many citizens on their own for up to 7 to 10 days. They (the city/county emergency response agencies) will need to rely on local communities to be self-sustaining during that lag time and as such are training local folks to be able to step up if and when needed. We've been learning the book-knowledge about setting up an incident command center, doing damage assessment, search and rescue, and first aid. Tomorrow we go to the Fire Department training site for actual drills, (including putting out fires!) after which we become certified responders. (I will post a follow-up to that soon after we complete it).

What does that have to do with adventures in gardening??? When I told Sarah about my participation in the CORE training, she reminded me that the shareable food movement was another important piece to emergency preparedness. (Visions of my neighbor's walnut tree danced in my head...)

Planting the seeds for a new way of being in our community...

So in addition to getting prepared to be among the first to respond to an emergency, we need to get our neighbors on board to be willing and able to share resources. The plan to get there??? Baby steps:

Next Tuesday, August 2nd is National Night Out Against Crime, the idea being to generate neighborhood spirit, police-community partnerships, etc. We'll use the opportunity to begin organizing our block. Today, we will distribute this  flyer to each home on our block, inviting everyone to gather in our newly weeded, cleaned, replanted, and now very pretty front yard (!!!) for dessert and wine:

A Journey to Eden: Re-discovering the Path

Laying the original path        The results of our efforts
    Autumn 2004                            Summer 2005  ,,,,,,,,

My previous posting inspired me.  I’d found (and posted) pictures we’d taken back in 2004 when we first laid the flagstone for a meandering path in our front garden along with photos from the following summer when the garden had matured around the stone pathway. 

The path overgrown
Early summer 2011

I had forgotten how pretty it was, particularly as it had since become overgrown with crabgrass, ornamental strawberries, clover, dandelions, and the occasional thorny blackberry vine. Season after season, year after year, we neglected the path to the point where we became indifferent to the overgrowth. I just presumed the path was lost to the weeds and doomed forever by the so-called thug plants.  Why I thought that, I can’t say for certain, but such thinking was consistent with my state of mind: both the path and the energy & will to recover it were nowhere to be found.

What an apt allegory or metaphor for my spiritual life. Like my garden path, my spiritual journey has been a meandering one. It was laid on a foundation of Catholicism, but informed by wanderings on many diverse paths: born-again evangelical Christianity; Islam, New-Age Spiritualism; Wicca, and esoteric Judaism (Kabbalah), to name a few. I first became aware of having a deep spirit life around age 13 and from that time, my spiritual beliefs have been a wonderful source of energy, direction, and nurturing for me. There have been times over the years when both my faith and practices were strong and consistent. There have been other times when I was indifferent to my spiritual path, other concerns grew large and distracting, competing for my energy and attention to the point where they covered-up the path (or at a minimum, made it that much harder to tread on it).

Teaching a class on medical ethics

Such was the case up to recently. I've spent the past 14 years in an elite medical education environment and I can say without question that life in academia is demanding. As a romantic, it can be seen as the idyllic life of the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom. And I have loved that aspect of it. Where else can you just simply think the largest thoughts you can imagine, discuss them with some of the smartest people, and even get paid for it? 


But in the trenches – the everydayness of the job – there is this relentless “up or out” imperative, this “publish or perish” mantra that shatters the romantic image, bringing out the worst in my colleagues and myself. The pressures are intense, particularly in elite institutions such as mine. In such environments you are measured "on the curve" and the curve is set by the successes of your peers: the Nobel laureates, the MacArthur geniuses, the Pioneer Awardees... It is a situation where being good enough somehow is never good enough. The expectations can sometimes feel inhuman. I was once told that if I am getting enough sleep at night, I am probably not working hard enough. Such a life can zap your energy (and will) and have you daily walking past the neglected, forgotten garden of your life and not even notice the garden or the path you are on.

There is an African proverb that says: To stumble is not to fall but rather to move forward quickly.

Last year was a hard year, a year of stumbling. But stumbling such that it led (thank God) to falling forward. It was at one of my lowest points that I realized that I had made a choice to live the life I was living – one full of stress with dubious rewards – and that I could choose something else. I declared to myself that in one year, 365 days, I would be in a new place, engaged in work where my God-given gifts and the skills and talents I've developed over the years would be perfectly matched. Even if my work circumstances wouldn't change, I would be (changed).


The story of Genesis – the Creation story – was the perfect allegory for the task ahead of me of re-creating myself. I named my process "My Journey to Eden," which would come to have multiple meanings (that I will share over time). But for now I will fast forward to the present. Next month I shall begin a year of training in Clinical Pastoral Education. I will be in a new place, engaged in God's work of becoming a spiritual companion for others.

The Task at Hand: Recovering the Neglected Pathway

This journey to Eden has returned me to gardening. This week, I undertook the task to recover the lost stone path. And in the process, I am affirming my own recovery.

Re-discovering My Path

...All in a Row (Tous dans une rangée)

Marie, Marie tout à fait contrairement, 

comment votre jardin se développe-t-il?

Regardless of what comes last (pretty maidens, cowslips, ladybells or what have you), they, along with the silver bells and shells, were placed in an orderly fashion, all in a row. 

This was no English garden. 

(Perhaps yet another reason why Mary was considered contrary). If she was at all obsessed with order, then le jardin de Marie was un jardin à la française, (a French garden), which according to wikipedia is "a style of garden based on symmetry and the principle of imposing order over nature." The gardens of Château de Villandry (a French castle built in the Loire Valley of France during the Renaissance) are a good example.

Château de Villandry 

I, by contrast, embrace the seemingly disorderliness (perhaps a better word is the "whimsicality") of an English garden. A fellow garden blogger described them as looking "like someone went out and threw a huge bunch of seeds in the air and let them grow where they may." That's exactly what I did with my (second?) garden here in our Rockridge home. 


A little history: soon after we moved in, we dug up a water-thirsty lawn and tried to keep the grass at bay for the next few years. When we finally thought we had it under control, I broadcast a bunch of drought-tolerant California wild flower seeds and waited. That was in the early spring of 2004. Funny how like-flowers clumped together (I guess they worked it out among themselves underground before emerging) because by that summer, I had a patch of yellow Rudbekia (Black-Eyed Susan) in one clump, blue asters in another, California poppies in yet another, and several others that I could not name, each emerging together in their own space around the yard. 

Constructing our sandstone path,
Autumn 2004

Guided by the spaces around the flowers, we put in a meandering path made of sandstone and planted moss in between. I added a few favorites to the yard (Echinacea or Purple Coneflowers; and iris, hyacinth, tulip, & daffodil bulbs) and threw in a few potted specials on sale at the neighborhood Long's Drug store (may it RIP).  In an attempt to recapture the gardens of our youth, we put in a lilac bush in one corner. (To both Alec and I, spring is synonymous with lilacs in bloom). Our next door neighbor's Cala Lilies sprung up there, too. And it seemed like a good idea at the time, my putting in a border of strawberries. I alternated a wild variety with an everbearing one that would yield edible fruit. (Another neighbor warned me not to. I should have listened. I'll reveal why at a later time).  

Our (second?) front yard garden, circa Summer 2005

The remaining empty patches around the yard were filled with bark mulch and voilà! By the following summer we had a small English garden on Lawton Street. It was a delightful summer and summers are long in Northern California.This was the garden which drew compliments. And it was pretty.


Maintenance was fairly easy, then. But the winter brought rain and cold and the flowers and blooms all faded. By February, when generally the rains stop and it begins to warm up as well, the weeds and "thugs" begin to arrive and it requires effort to keep them from overtaking everything.  That effort presumes that I am able to be attentive to the garden. 

The state of my garden is a pretty good indicator of the state of my peace of mind (or lack thereof). Up until recently, I had not paid much attention to the garden. I'd walk past it daily but turn a blind eye to the overgrowth and results of neglect. In my opening blog, I blamed it on "an 80 mile round-trip job commute that sucked the life energy from me." The commute is an easy scapegoat. The truth is harder to articulate. 


Somehow, over the past several years, I'd gotten lost in the academic life of a researcher, pursuing a reward that has lost its shimmer. At the end of the day, after the papers are published, the grant applications submitted, the conference presentations made, is there a there, there? Who is touched by what I do? Where is the impact of my work, the fruits of my labor? Where am I doing good in the world? 


I once had a life where the impact of my work was immediate. I delivered babies, resuscitated a dying child, counseled an alcoholic, befriended an agoraphobic. I lived on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona and served the community as their family physician. And my garden thrived there. 


Early in my life as a researcher, I studied ethical issues surrounding death and dying. I was humbled to be present and witness the full experience of dying among the ten individuals diagnosed with serious and eventually fatal illnesses who agreed to be research participants and allow me to observe their last journey for my first ethnographic study. (I share my reflections on this project here and here.)



But somewhere along the process, I ceased having direct contact with patients and research participants. Instead I analyzed surveys and focus groups, mined data and text, and crunched numbers. I mastered statistics and my subjects became data points. Imposing order over nature, I lost my sense of purpose. Don't get me wrong, I love how my thinking has been sharpened through the many research methods I have mastered. But to what purpose? Another publication? Another rung up the academic ladder? 



Last year, May of 2010, I hit a wall. At my lowest point, I gave myself a year to be in a new place, mentally, spiritually, professionally ... (and now horticulturally!) I created a plan and I called it my Journey to Eden. (I look forward to sharing the details of that plan). The year has arrived and next month, I return to the life of a clinician. The journey has returned me to my garden and to a new peace of mind. 

And Pretty Maids...

I've thankfully arrived at the last verse in the English nursery rhyme.  This should free me up a bit to frame my future writings according to some other rubric...perhaps. After all, this is a blog about a transformative journey, not about a nursery rhyme. But there is much to learn about such journeys through rhymes. Or rather, there's a wisdom in them that is worth thinking about. And thus we come to the final verse. What can it teach? I shall cover the first part here and will complete the verse in the next blog.

Mary Mary quite contrary,

how does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockle shells...

Most of us know the version that says she had pretty maids (all in a row). But it seems that Mary's garden changed a lot.

According other versions, she had cowslips (all in a row). I am intrigued with this one. Cowslips, also known as the Venus herb, is a popular flower in the British Isles known for its magical and medicinal uses. Think of Botticelli 's The Birth of Venus and you'll note that she emerged from the sea having been born from a cockle shell. So it follows that if you have cockle shells in the garden, certainly the Venus herb should be there, as well. As you all should know, Venus is the Goddess of Love and what better place to include love than in the garden.

Another verse has her having ladybells (all in a row). A beautiful flower, a hardy perennial... I'm thinking this might look good in my front garden. Except there is a discussion board dedicated to warning you never to plant this one. They call it a thug (for it's ability to takeover a garden and overcome your other plants.) But remember that Mary was contrary and I may be as well.

As many other authors have noted, there are many other endings to this nursery rhyme (columbines, cuckolds, and muscles all in a row) and it isn't clear which is the original. Given the nature of nursery rhymes, it shouldn't matter -- that is, whether or not these verses were composed for the entertainment or education of children or for adults as political satire or joviality, they have been continually shaped and reshaped to fit their purpose.

Case in point: a series of advertisements that appeared in British newspapers, magazines, and billboards to discuss climate change (which, by the way, were banned by the Advertising Standards Authority as being misleading - go figure) .

Well, maybe the endings weren't poetic in the sense of rhyming, but the point is made. Nursery rhymes have been used for centuries as the times dictated.

And so I shall similarly use it for my purposes. I'm using Mary's garden verse: to announce and reclaim a certain freedom (a commitment on my part to make life choices that promotes growth); to chronicle my exploration of the urban garden movement (for my own family's sustainability and for raising awareness of food instability and the environmental crisis); to affirm my spirituality and faith as it guides me on my transformative journey; to reflect on my family--my forebears, relatives, and immediate family, and how they are an important source of moral and material support; to begin (as my next entry will introduce) a process of community organizing; and to do all of this as a labor of deep love --for life, for God, for family, for humanity.

And Cockle Shells

The use of Mary Mary Quite Contrary (MMQC) as a title for a blog about gardening is obviously not very original, as I've discovered from exploring the many websites that are in some way related to the nursery rhyme. There are hundreds (thousands?) of sites using some variation of MMQC as a title for their garden blog.

There are perhaps equal numbers of sites that focus on interpretations of the rhyme’s meaning.  Seems like it is quite a controversial little ditty. In due time, I’m sure I’ll incorporate these various explanations in some way or another in my writings about my journey to a Garden of Eden. But today, I was struck by one that interpreted the Old English verse as a hidden reference to Old Druid beliefs in earth energy and magic. 

To the authors of this website, Mary represents the fertility energies of the earth; her contrariness due to her being ruled by the Moon (vs. the Sun); her garden representing ancient sites such as those in Glastonbury where Celtic pagan fertility rites of spring where held; and her silver bells were used to call forth the faerie spirits and other magical inhabitants between the worlds to “bestow their energies upon the plants… to be more abundant in their flowering and fruiting.” As for the meaning of the cockle shells, the Druid authors fall flat in providing a convincing interpretation. They suggest that cockle shells are the poor man’s faerie bells, similarly shaken to invoke the earth spirits. That seems lame.

Any decent gardener knows that despite the richest, most fertile soil and the best of intentions (be they prayers or faeries dust)—these mean nothing without water. Seeds will not sprout and plants will wither and die without it. Surely Mary knew this. (There is a wonderful essay by Walter Brenneman titled : The Circle and the Cross: Reflections on the Holy Wells of Ireland that discusses this while evoking the symbolism of Mary's garden.) 

Cockle Shells Taken at Wells-Next-The-Sea
Norfolk, England
(c) All rights reserved josie-gd

If indeed Mary was from the British Isles as the Druids would have, (and I’m not convinced), scenes like one pictured on the left were as common in her day as they are now. So surely she was aware that the cockle is a creature of the sea, a living creature—“bivalve” animals from the phylum Mollusca (like their cousins: clams, oysters, mussels, and scallops). They are called bivalve, because they have "two (from the Latin bis) sides (from the Latin valvae, meaning "leaves of a door"). Despite all appearances, they are pretty active critters, consuming a fair amount of organic matter from the sea. 

Cockle Shell Bivalve Puffing and Puffing

And they’ve been around for quite awhile. After the dinosaurs died out some 60 million years ago, they burrowed underground and developed the protective surfaces we see in their shells – spines, ridges, and teeth – evolutionary tactics to make them less enticing to their predators. 

(c) seashellcity.com

One particular species of cockle developed a unique shape to warrant the Latin name, Cardium cardissa, the “Heart Cockle.” It has been used as a symbol of love and it is said that it was given to many a maiden as a token of a sailor’s affections. This is also likely the source of the English idiom, “to warm the cockle’s of someone’s heart” which means to provide happiness or bring a deeply felt contentment. 

For me, the cockle evokes fond memories of every summer spent from my infancy to early adulthood at the beaches of South Carolina, where these shells were plentiful. When I am stressed to my limit, it is the coast of South Carolina that beckons me.  From the Grand Strand of Myrtle Beach in the northern part of the state, to the beaches surrounding historic Charleston where my mother’s family originated, down through the pristine white sand beaches of the low country sea islands - it is these soothing white sand seascapes that warm the cockles of my heart and become the balm for my soul. 

I shall have more to say about shells and South Carolina later as they are clearly central characters in my journey to Eden.

With Silver Bells...

Mary Mary Quite Contrary,

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockle shells

And pretty Maidens all in a row.

According to the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, the popular English verse (for which this blog is titled) is a parable about Catholicism. How appropriate, being that I am devotedly Catholic. How also appropriate given that there are at least two interpretations of that attribution regarding the rhyme: one being the verse romanticizes the Faith; the other interpretation being its condemnation of the Church. That pretty well sums up my relationship to my religion.

On both accounts, I become even more affirmed that I've chosen the right topic for this blog. Lots of metaphors and allegories of an account of my journey to Eden through adventures in gardening. This will become more apparent, I'm sure, as my garden, this blog, and I evolve.

My previous entry tackled the first two lines of the verse. Today's installment takes on the next part: the bells. In the rhyme, they represent the sanctus bells rung during the Catholic Mass. No longer used at most services, I can still hear them in my mind's ears during Mass--three handheld bells rapidly shaken during the Eucharistic prayers at the point when the priest holds up the bread and later, the wine, saying for each  "Take this, this is my body...this is my blood..."

Soleri Bronze Windbells gracing my back garden

Contrary Mary's garden bells were silver. Mine are bronze. These are Soleri Bells that I bought sometime in the mid-to-late 1980's at Arcosanti when we lived in Arizona. Writer Ray Wyman, Jr. captures the Arcosanti/Soleri phenomenon best on his Heavypen website: (I quote) "The grotesquely beautiful ceramic and brass wind chimes of Arcosanti are the joint creation of Paolo Soleri and his wife, Colly. Sold in malls and over the Internet, the bells of Arcosanti have gradually become familiar fixtures in homes and schools around the world. Yet, the bells are more than a dash of fashion with which to accent our surroundings. They are a call to arms against the compound problems of an exploding world population, worsening pollution, shrinking resources, and poor public policy. The alarm over our global environmental situation has only recently been raised, but Soleri has been sounding his warning bells for nearly fifty years."

Their sound is far from melodic - even the Cosanti Foundation that sells them warn not to expect the soothing sound of a wind chime. These are large, heavy, irregularly shaped bronze works of art that do not ring easily. But when they do, it is as if a gong is singing a song to the wind. Listen for yourself.  When we first moved in to our Rockridge home, we hung them on our front porch. Our neighbor to our West complained immediately. In all fairness, her bedroom window was directly across from our porch, and though I would love to be lulled to sleep or awakened gently by them, they are clearly not to everyone's taste. So now they live in our backyard and our Eastern neighbor seems to enjoy them - well, at least she has not complained.

As promised, I am posting pictures of the backyard work-in-progress.  A few weeks earlier, Alec, my husband, dug up the weeds, ivy, thorny bushes, and residual roots in the thin strip of earth at the periphery of the yard along the side wall (the eyesore which is my Eastern neighbor's garage and not much we can do about it, at least not yet). I tackled putting in a border, choosing inexpensive bricks (we are on a tight budget) to create a clean, neat demarcation between the patch of earth and the pavement.

Next, I dug up the soil - dry, fairly dead (no critters) and put in manure and compost. I sifted the soil I'd dug up, removing rocks, old toys, and sundry garbage, and added it back to the manure and compost. This is to be my melon patch, and most garden sites suggest you use some kind of drip irrigation placed under black landscape fabric to keep the soil warm for the melons. I laid the drip hose, covered with black weed cloth, and at last, I planted the cantaloupe I'd started inside from seed weeks ago along with watermelon bought as a seedlings; and I sowed Roma beans and brussel sprouts seeds straight into the ground.

The seeds were sown and covered, protected from birds; rocks have been removed; thorny blackberry plant dug up and at bay; rich nutrient soil placed several inches deep. There is still a fair amount of clean up to do. But a good days work indeed.

I finished in time to shower and go to Mass. The Gospel reading today? The Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-9)

"A sower went out to sow.

And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and birds came and ate it up.

Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil.

It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep,

and when the sun rose it was scorched,

and it withered for lack of roots.

Some seed fell among thorns,

and the thorns grew and choked it.

But some seed fell on rich soil, and produced fruit,

a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold. 

Whoever has ears ought to hear."

How does my garden grow?

This is my fifth garden. Actually this is about the 3rd version of my fifth garden, but the first one here in Oakland where I am trying to become an urban farmer. As usual, this blog is an afterthought, after I've put in the first of many hours transforming a raggedy neglected (embarrassing) backyard in a valiant effort to create a food garden. If only I'd been organized beforehand, I'd have taken lots of before pictures. My verbal description will have to suffice for now...and tomorrow I'll take pics of the mid-way process and post them.

First, a little background. We bought our Rockridge home in 1998. The previous owners had paved over the entire back in concrete and built a series of huge decks that covered almost all of the small 600 square feet of space. They put a huge hot tub smack dab in the middle of the deck. And they surrounded the entire deck system with netting and fencing (meant to afford some privacy for the hot tubbers). We had no idea when we moved in that behind the deck there was this scrawny little tree that in our second year here produced a couple of lemons. But we couldn't access the lemons because the poor dear was choked behind the deck and netting and difficult to reach.

So three years after we moved in, we started a major remodel. The first to go was the tub and decks. What a wonderful surprise to find that it was a Meyer Lemon tree -- everbearing some of the most delicious lemons in nature. Freeing it from its prison must have made it happy. It is thriving and producing year round (with spring crops of up to 400 lemons). But this entry is not about the Meyer. It is about reclaiming nature from a concrete prison.

The next challenge we faced in the back was a wild blackberry bush. To someone who has never had one of those, you might think we are fortunate (visions of blackberry cobbler...mmm). But this is not a docile being. This is a Himalayan Blackberry - a vicious thorny critter that refuses to behave nicely. Remember, we had essentially abandoned the back yard our first few years here, so to imagine what happens when you neglect a yard with a Himalayan Blackberry bush, think about Sleeping Beauty's castle surrounded by a bramble of thorns. If you are a kinesthetic person, take a sharp pin and jam it into your arms, legs, or fingers...repeatedly and you'll get the idea. (Poor Sam, we put up a basketball hoop for him after we got rid of the hot tub and decks, but he could never play because the ball kept getting eaten by the bramble.) My husband has done battle with this bush for the past 12 years. It requires vigilance. At the moment, it is relatively tamed (ha! it's shown up in the front yard). My goal is to keep it under control, just enough to pick berries for food. Wish me luck and I will post my cobbler recipe once I am successful in taming it.

So now we have a concrete back yard, home to a Meyer lemon tree on a thin strip of soil and a thorny invasive monster. It also collects the junk we need to throw out. In fact, I'm determined to get all the hazardous waste (old paint, roofing tar, and various other toxic household liquids) that we've left out hauled out tomorrow to the Alameda County Household Hazardous Waste drop-off center.

Lastly, we have neglected both the front and back yards consistently over the years. I am just waiting for the producers from HGTV's Curb Appeal: The Block to show up and tell us we've been selected as the neighborhood eyesore. (Yes, we have no pride. Put us on the air and gladly work your magic.) I've put in 2 or 3 gardens in the front. And once or twice, it thrived so beautifully that I even got compliments. (Thank God for California wildflowers). But if we don't weed in February, (or March, April, May...) the crab grass (and Himalayan Blackberries) take over, as seen here. Yes this is our front yard (thanks to Google maps). And we often don't weed in February or any other month for that matter. It's a mess. Or, it was a mess. It will have it's own blog entry another day. This is about the back yard.

Or rather, this is about becoming inspired to create this blog after nearly putting my back out today in our back yard. And why am I starting a blog about my garden, when it's clear I have failed, ignored, avoided, and neglected our yards, front, side, and back for most of the 14 years we've lived here? It's because despite my actions (or inactions), I love gardening. I was smitten with the peonies and lilacs my grandfather planted in our family home in Cincinnati, Ohio and the loving care he put into so that I could have my first garden love affair. I have loved it from my very first solo garden in Nashville, Tennessee, when I dug up some grass in the back of my rented home and threw some green bean seeds in the ground without a clue of what I was doing. I loved the eco-unfriendly but first successful garden I planted in my home in the Arizona High-Desert, that shared the space with a rattlesnake and a couple of scorpions; and my fragrance garden (honeysuckle, lilacs, roses) in Glen Park (San Francisco) planted to mask odors from the pet porta-potty we constructed for our little beagle named RedHen; and now with the series of gardens here in Rockridge.

But really, I am starting this blog to celebrate that I am now able to live a lifestyle where I can garden. I am like the Meyer Lemon tree, freed after 14 years of bondage. Only what subdued me was not a deck or a fence. It was fourteen years of an 80 mile round-trip job commute that sucked the life energy from me. Last year I decided I'd had enough. I am starting a new life and this blog is my reflection on this new journey of Grace to my Garden of Eden.