it rained all night & now thunder rolling in - summer storms are just a regular part of life around here.

the seeds are getting lots of nourishment - the rain settling in the beds that are composting in place.

it’s crazy how much satisfaction a little greenhouse stretched in tattered old plastic is bringing me. i’ve cleaned it & filled it with growing food, i painted it’s dutch doors bright red to match the other buildings. i surrounded it with a fenced garden & a cute garden gate.

i plan on converting it over to glass someday but love it just as it is now. every morning i’m in there with my coffee saying hello to all the plants thriving in the warm calm air.

me? am i thriving? i would say its a 50/50 equation. i suspect some of the ways in which i’m thriving haven’t been revealed to me yet.

it’s difficult to know how to exist day to day inside these times…the greater movements of the world out there. i know i’m dragging my heart around. it’s bumping along the rocks, picking up dirt, thumping away in spite of itself. these times are hard & heartbreaking

i would love to have more friends & community around. but now isn’t that time. life wants me to be a wild woman. facing fears. figuring shit out. getting er done. lots & lots of facing the void.

i’ve gotten pretty skilled at facing the void. it doesn’t scare me most times

what is the void but a black sky spattered with stars?

flowers in every room. petal trails. seed sorting. coffee coffee coffee. a stream & waterfall in the woods. water everywhere. back deck with Minnie

no bathroom. freezing cold hose showers. stumbling out of bed & into the night to pee. loneliness. waiting so long to do laundry i’ll be going to the laundromat today in a lace shirt & fancy taffeta skirt

i planted all kinds of seeds from gardens past into the new beds today. things like the greens, should come up pretty quickly & others are meant for a fall harvest. it’s a bit late to be throwing seeds right into the ground in this climate zone, but i like a bit of experimentation.

now i will keep these seeds consistently moist for the next week or so (summer rains will do a lot of that) & check the beds again & again for little sprouts poking through the soil!

an incredible bed of wild ferns & flowers grew in over my compost pile. it’s too beautiful to mess with - but never fear there are so many nitrogen sources around. we had a big pile of grass mowings that have been sitting at least a year - so i’ve been using that on the compost-in-place garden beds.

i do not till. i build soil via the lasagna mulching method. i do a solid bottom layer of cardboard, and then a layer of small sticks & heavier types of carbon for a bit of “lift”. i find letting the compost/soil fill these lifted areas, allows me to plant directly into the beds while they compost all around over time into perfect soil. we’ve got enough rain here to just let nature take its course, but if you are in an arid area, you will need to thoroughly water down the beds to activate the process. you will get your returns later when your soil is effectively storing water!

as long as you get solid coverage with the cardboard & mix nitrogen (greens - like grass cuttings, produce, animal manure) & carbon (browns - like leaves, sticks, straw) & add water & time you will end up with great soil.

healthy soil is truly the foundation of a beautiful & abundant garden.

as per usual, i’m using things i find around the land to build trellises & define space. i always plan in a place to sit & ponder - even when the space is small. a garden needs a place to just comfortably be & take it all in.

feel free to drop any questions in the comments. really trying to transition over here from social media. it’s just over-run with weird ads & sponsored posts by people i don’t know…& is owned by monsters i no longer want to support!

happy gardening 🌱

doing what i do out here. moving resources around, gardening , growing food …making things…

the cute garden gate went on yesterday. a friend’s son made it from some scrap wood he had around.

i’m experimenting with the fence …a bit of a weave… gonna finish the garden beds & let my subconscious mind think about the fence for a few days.

still laying out beds with cardboard. tomorrow i’ll finish the shapes & put a thick layer of compost mixed with some layers of the mowed, raked grass & pruned plant material from around the property, water it down & let it all compost in place.

& some pics of all the flowers & how things are coming along elsewhere on the property.

i’m finding these times profoundly depressing. still out of words. it’s hard to make sense of this world.

but nature makes sense

& for now i will mostly have to let the pictures do the talking.

well ya’ll. i don’t know about you but i find this all incredibly depressing. these times

heart is heavy

i don’t have tons of words at the moment. just want to make a concerted effort to post as casually here as I would normally do on instagram.

i hope those that want to will join me over here instead.

anyhoo. a friend & her son built the garden fence. I’ll be finishing the bottom 2 ft (the part that has contact with the ground) & i’ll show you that soon.

laying out garden beds..fresh compost for the veggies..

yesterday my knees gave way to grief. i do that a lot these days - just sink down where i am in overwhelm. but yesterday i stayed down, all the way down & let myself fall into the world of unmowed grass.

a world of bugs & tiny flowers. i’m covered in bites today but I needed to be there - to be taken out of the news cycle banging around in my head. the instagram reels the talking heads. we are all metabolizing -& hopefully acting on - a deluge of information. it all feels right now (!) important because it is.

all those people shouting at me from social media - they are real people. the issues are real. the grief is real. but so are these bug bites & the grass stains on all my jeans, & the clouds moving so fast across the sky.

breathe

It’s been one year and four months since I designed and installed this native front yard garden in South LA. There was nary a plant in sight and now it’s filled with life and provides lots of privacy from the busy streets beyond to enjoy their “park” :)

Below is a mockup of the garden design. I never design on a computer…or even on a piece of paper. I will make these mockups after I have gone through my design process which is done through physical exploration of the site. I think about palettes, movement through the space, growing conditions…and I pace, lots and lots of pacing! I walk and walk through the space, I sit in different areas to take things in from different heights, take in the views and notice things I might not want to look at everyday.

I’ll be going into depth about my design process through a series of workshops I’ll be doing from my land this summer. Design through exploration is accessible to us all. You don’t need any formal training and you definitely don’t need to learn any software!!!

I’ll share dates when I have them and there will be lots of opportunities to dip into the process. I’ll be out there all summer and fall gardening.

And a few more pics of the rambunctious springtime growth my client sent over the other day.

I suppose I should throw on a “before” for those that haven’t seen this one!