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.