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.