We’re not gardening at all right now — blame the squirrels who are athletic enough to leap the six feet from the bird of paradise to our balcony.
When we finally get around to constructing a squirrel-proof cage and re-planting seeds, this blog will resume its updates.
In the meantime, check out my other (new) Tumblr, Hall of Nouns. I’m using it to chronicle things about the world that I find intriguing. Gardens will probably make an appearance.
— Kristen
This is how our new balcony garden has fared. K. built boxes and planted a few things. Naively, we assumed nothing bad could happen to our little garden on the third floor. We forgot that squirrels are the Cirque du Soleil freaks of the natural world. What you’re looking at is the result of one of those building-scaling bastards coming in cover of darkness to nibble down everything it liked, then dig a big hole in the southeast corner as a final “Forget you, human!”
What’s next for our garden: building tall, squirrel-proof cages out of chicken wire, then latching them to the sides of the boxes. Once we get that piece of technology in place, we’re going to re-plant some Baker Creek Seeds we picked up over our Christmas trip to my hometown. I’m eager to get another crop of New Zealand spinach—a furry, mineral-tasting veg that makes the best homemade quiche you can imagine.
I never did write that “goodbye garden” post I promised. Actually, that’s not quite true. I wrote it, then my computer ate it. Yes, it is possible to have 20 years of experience using a Macintosh and still, on rare occasions, delete your own work without saving. Kids, remember, always compose your material offline in a text editor. You can’t trust the big, bad blogging software.
We said goodbye to our garden, then went back last month for a visit. Our neighbor, a pretty horrible fair weather farmer, must have petitioned to take over our plot, doubling the size of hers. The fence wall we’d built to separate us is now gone, and she has a glorious 200 square feet of space in which to half-heartedly tend to her pots of cherry tomatoes.
It’s too depressing. The sight of our hand-made fence of salvaged scrap wood belonging to someone else, our soil conquered and annexed by someone who never did succeed in pulling up her weeds, is like a dagger to the heart of this gardener. I’m sure anyone who’s ever community gardened next to a dabbler can understand.
It was a bummer to give up our garden, but we’re looking forward. Onward to better things and hopefully bigger space, either in Upstate New York or here in L.A. (one can dream).
— Kristen
Awareness is a start.
An important reminder, especially for Americans.
(Source: educationandequityatvic)
This is what happened the last time we visited our community garden.
The truth is, we haven’t been over there much this year. We’ve been busy and often it’s difficult to make the time to travel the 15-20 minutes it takes to get there. Add to that the fact that the L.A. Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners has raised the plot fees from $25/year to $120, and it just doesn’t seem worth it—especially when we’re out of town during the biggest harvest.
This is not my Goodbye Garden post. We still have one more trip out to the garden to retrieve our extra supplies. I’ll take some pictures then so I can close this chapter of our lives with a nice recap post commemorating our two good years together. After that, the somewhat abridged party moves to our 14” wide, third-story condo balcony. I’m sure the finches who live in our gutter are thrilled.
Inspiration for the upcoming summer.
For anyone who’s been curious about our garden: we’re hoping to check it out this weekend. The winters in Los Angeles have been getting colder, so we haven’t seen much point to planting when the nights can dip to 40 or lower. It’s been a slow garden year so far.
I’ve been a little remiss in photographing our garden lately. These pictures are from late September, when our summer squash peaked. Last week we tore out almost everything so we can mix up some new planter box soil and start fresh with new seeds. We’ve decided to let the squash remain—for now. Its days are numbered.
We’re not sure what to plant next, but we already have two spontaneous rose bushes courtesy of our neighbor’s seeds falling over the fence into our plot. More free roses!
On another note, we just watched “The Town” last night on free Showtime weekend. Watching Rebecca Hall tend to her community garden plot, all I could think is, “Ugh. She’s one of those people whose plot is a jungle.” We have neighbors like that in our garden. Their plots are overgrown, intertwined tumbles of sage brush and lilacs. There isn’t a whole lot you can do with them except stand outside and water them from a safe distance.
Here’s a link to an article about people who are salvaging prefab homes and dragging them to cheap land they’ve bought. This is another variation on the tiny house phenomenon, combined with the green urge to recycle. This “alternative lifestyle,” “homesteading,” “hoarding money is not as important as having a good quality of life” trend is very interesting to me.
This link to Urban Rancher’s blog has nothing to do with community gardening, but I’m sharing it because it falls into the category of my two latest obsessions:
More gardening posts soon, I promise. We have some pictures somewhere of summer squash the size of my calf. And by calf I mean “lower leg,” not “baby cow.” Livestock is still a long way off in my future.
I hope the L.A. River becomes a usable kayaking and canoeing attraction, but it’s impossible to imagine how the city would restrict the river access when it floods and becomes wildly dangerous to the inexperienced. I’m thinking armed guards…? Something about that image is very L.A.
I’ve emerged from my summer blogging hibernation to say, “Woot! Go SUNY!” Yesterday I didn’t know anything about SUNY Binghamton, which lies a bit west of where we live every summer. Today, I know that they’re a green college. Most excellent.
2012 Green College Honor Roll
• American University (Washington, D.C.)
• Arizona State University (Tempe, Ariz.)
• College of the Atlantic (Bar Harbor, Maine)
• Dickinson College (Carlisle, Pa.)
• Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta)
• Harvard College (Cambridge, Mass.)
• Northeastern University (Boston)
• Oregon State University (Corvallis, Ore.)
• San Francisco State University (San Francisco, Calif.)
• Binghamton University, State University of New York
• University of California (Santa Cruz, Calif.)
• University of Maine (Orono, Maine)
• University of Washington (Seattle)
• University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point
• Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, Va.)
• Warren Wilson College (Asheville, N.C.)
2 people. 1 200 sq. foot gardening plot. Lots of stories.
This blog chronicles our experiences urban community vegetable gardening in Los Angeles. With occasional forays into related topics, like: learning to cook what we grow, finding ways to stay fit without going to the gym, and learning how to have a healthier relationship to food that isn't chocolate and doesn't come on a cone.
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