...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. 

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.