Moving In

The most daunting step for most in starting a garden is that first shovelful of dirt. Magazines and gardening books will tell you that you must plan everything first, from the pathways to the color schemes to the layering of different types of compost. They recommend getting a Ph test done on your soil, and, if you plan to raise any kind of livestock, checking the city codes to make sure it is legal in your neighborhood.

My personal brand of foolishness involves throwing caution to the wind.

So, before doing any reading, any research, any planning, I had sunk that shovel deep into the ground and altered the beautiful landscape that I had inherited.

When we first looked into this house nine years ago, we were enchanted with the backyard. Truly, it was the feature that sold the house. The previous owners had planted rows of roses, foxgloves, and fruit trees, all in full-blooming glory that June. There was a gigantic wall of plants on one fence, bougainvillea, lantana, and wisteria, creating a mosaic of fuchsia, lavender and pink. A Giant Bird of Paradise filled one corner, dark green leaves and white petals reaching into the blue. We put in our bid, and a month later we were moving in. Then, as the gentleman gave us the rundown on all the valves, levers, and systems that ran through the house, the first shoe dropped.

It is normal to feel overwhelmed when you are assuming ownership of a property for the first time. But the diagram of the sprinkler system that was handed to me, a 10-pager, all meticulously drawn out by hand with arrows and footnotes and marginal references, took several weeks of study. To be honest, I still couldn’t explain it to you. There were levers that had to be turned to water this corner, then shut-offs and screw-ins for the next corner. It was a homespun, Rube Goldberg contraption designed by a self-taught, crackpot engineer, and a bloodsucker of time and energy. And, unfortunately, the whole backyard of water-intensive plants depended on it.

Everything died. The roses withered to blackened, thorn-encrusted brambles. The wall of colorful tropical vegetation first housed a brazen pack of rats, then overgrew and eventually tore down the fence. The fruit trees were eaten root first by gophers. Despite that 10-page handwritten guide to the care of Eden, we failed miserably.

So began the slow transformation. Trees and roses were removed. The wall of vegetation was hacked down, the rats shooed away, and a new fence built. I struggled with my environmentally friendly push mower for many months before throwing in the towel on the lawn. With my youngest in a backpack carrier, I uprooted the crabgrass lawn and shoveled in new soil. Volunteer trees pushed up and were allowed to grow. The flowers that love this climate stayed on and continue to bloom. And I started imagining my suburban farm.

When I say my farm, I truly mean that this backyard is now imbued with the flaws and random accidental successes that characterize my agricultural skills. That is to say, that I really don’t have any skill. But let this be a message of hope, because, as you will see, it doesn’t take a whole lot of skill to grow plants. The gift of nature is that it just keeps growing. So, if there is any part of you that responds to the smell of fresh basil, the clucking chatter of a hen on her nest, or the first leaf buds on a weathered branch, then throw that Martha Stewart Living aside and dig in.