How it began

Remember when it was just an overgrown field?

     There's packets of seeds on my dining room table. Broccoli, cabbage, onions. What do I know of growing a winter crop? Not enough. But I'll approach this task like I do most aspects of life: calmly and confidently ..... while reading everything I can get my hands on about it!

     I think of how far this plot of earth has come, and yet, how far it has to go. When we moved into our home, the neighbor's 7 acres of dying walnut trees was a sad sight. With each spring, the foxtails and grass would grow, dry out in the summer and become a frightening fire hazard. The neighbor weeded and tilled it with a tractor in fall, and the process would start all over again with the winter rains.
     Unemployed, I filled my hours taking care of my yard - mowing the lawn, adding nectarine, apricot, peach, tangerine and apple trees to the plums, trellising grapes over the arbor, and splitting the irises to spread purple and white blooms to the fence line. 

The plums usually wind up being made into jam. Guess I could try drying some for prunes?

The Granny Smith apples will be used in pies this year.

Purple and yellow irises were already on the property of our home.  I'll add some to the backyard and give the gophers "snacks" so they'll leave the irises alone!

     Next door, however, I couldn't help but notice the weeds. The neighborhood children dragged an abandoned couch into the lot. Stray dogs left "their business" behind. Homeless people dug through a pile of boxes.

     "Hey Neighbor, would you mind if I took over this section, and grew a garden until the land sells?" I asked.

     "Go ahead," he said. First things first, I put up a fence!

Our grapes grow so abundantly, the chickens get to enjoy some before I make jelly out of the crop.

My magenta hollyhocks remind me of the flowers Mom grew on the south side of our Tipton home. I was terrified of the bumblebees they attracted!

Remembering Tipton

     Recalling the huge garden my parents had at our childhood home in Tipton, I knew this would involve a lot of weeding, watering and bugs. There was an apple tree for our youngest brother, a peach tree for me, a fig tree for mom. 

This is the house in Tipton where we lived until I was 12. The garden was in the back and there used to be a hydrangea, ivy, and trees in the front yard. Dad had planted oleanders along the east perimeter for privacy. Mom grew hens and chicks in a flower bed.

     I can still taste the fig jelly mom made, recall the joy of shucking sweet corn like a summer-time present, and the buzz of bumble bees around the bursting columns of hot pink and maroon hollyhocks.

A garden of my own

Taz ... hard at work!

Close-up of canna leaf shows bold red and green variegated pattern.

     So now, I can create my own garden. I can design the layout and mood of the area. I would take care of the plants and the watering. I could invite friends to sit and enjoy this one small part of God's planet where serenity grows amongst the almond trees, canna plants and tomatoes. 
     It's been 3 years since I've had a full-time job. Instead of a newsroom or classroom, I work outdoors. My staff consists of 4 cats, a small doggie and 25 chickens.

The chickens are ALWAYS hungry!

     The night shift includes foxes, an owl, bats, possums and the occasional skunk. We're thinking of adding goats to our company. Although the surrounding neighbors' dogs want to join in as freelancers, the answer is always, "No!" (They're hungry and I'm not running a KFC.)

Scaredy, one of our other 4 cats.

     It's taken months of mowing down foxtails and overgrown grass, tilling, digging out barbed wire and downed telephone polls, dismantling a broken-down shed, unearthing bicycle parts, plucking out broken shards of beer bottles, and tugging at crumpled up buried tarp to get the plot ready.

This spring time shot shows the grass and weeds just getting started.

     Downed limbs and tree stumps had to be chainsawed and stacked into firewood. And now with fencing in place to keep stray doggies out, I can finally start adding manure to enrich the soil. The bare plot looks like this:

One portion of the land with transplanted cannas in the background, pots with flower starts and tomato plants on the left.

I've started moving my collection of free grape stakes to the future winter garden. A commercial grape grower in Selma was giving away grape stakes. Free ... yeah, I can afford that!

     As The Vegetable Garden website suggests for our Zone 9, I'll be planting broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, onions and radishes.
Check them out at: http://www.thevegetablegarden.info/resources/planting-schedules/zones-9-10-planting-schedule

     Now, it's time to send those gophers packing, till in manure, set seeds and set up soaker hoses. See you at sunrise : - )