Nature's Cruel Joke

Out the bedroom window at night, the crickets sing the melancholy song of summer's ending. We spent our last lazy afternoon at the pool today, and will leave for possibly the last camping trip tomorrow. Just as the warm weather lingers and you want to be out grasping every last bit of summer's glory, your garden goes nuts and there's picking and preserving to be done.

A week or so ago, we were going plum crazy, with our yellow plum tree laden with little golden beauties. They aren't freestones so they don't dry well, just good for eating and jam. Fortunately my mom was visiting and helped me can some plum jam for the winter. Now the purple plum tree is bending down and I need to get picking those because we can dry those in the food dehydrator for wintertime snacking.

The Tomato Forest has been busy, I've picked 50 lbs of tomatoes so far and there's no stopping it. Fortunately, we have freezer space so I'm just throwing them all into gallon freezer bags and I will deal with them later when it's drizzly and yukky outside and I can stand to be in the kitchen all day. These variegated heirloom beauties were too gorgeous to make into a sauce though, so they became part of this 20-mile breakfast.



Everything on the plate comes from less than 20 miles away. Chard and tomatoes from garden, eggs from chickens, goat's milk from our local connection, feta cheese from the farmer's market, and sausage from a locally and humanely raised pig. Beautiful, sustainable, and YUM. P.S. I've eaten so much chard I think my eyes are turning green!

Tipping Points

I just finished reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. Ironically, the book has been out since 2002 and I've had a couple of people recommend it to me over the years, but in the last few weeks several people have said I should read it. I guess I hit a tipping point of friend recommendations and so I went and checked it out from the library.

The book itself is excellent reading, and covers a wide variety of subjects from fashion trends to crimewaves to cigarette addiction. For anyone interested in taking sustainable actions and helping them to become trends in the general populace, I think The Tipping Point has a lot to say as well. As you know, I've posted updates occasionally here on the number of cyclists that I see on my evening commute. Well, I seem to have reached some sort of tipping point there because the other night there were simply too many to count. Just as one was zooming by in one direction, another was passing or going by in another. I had to think "did I already count the lady in the red hat?" and when it gets to that point really, what's the point of counting? I lost it somewhere after 65, which I think means the number of cyclists in my commute has gone from "a few" to "a lot" to "too numerous to count individuals". In other words, it's a trend that has tipped.

It seems as if the initial spike in gas prices (you all remember when gas was over $4 a gallon, right?) set the trend in motion, and it was given a boost by the economic crisis. Once there is a critical mass of cyclists on the road, then people who might otherwise feel it's "too dangerous" to cycle begin to feel that it's a safe and reasonable thing to do. Or perhaps they see another parent toting their kids, or another businessman in a suit, or another person who is older than they are riding a bicycle and they realize that they can do it too. Whatever the numerous causes, at least in my town it has tipped and there are cyclists zipping here, there, and everywhere. I think the urban gardens are approaching that tipping point here as well. Last summer I had a few to choose from to take photos of for this blog, and now they're simply everywhere - in front of expensive homes and apartment blocks and duplexes, at least in my end of town. Now when the truly suburban lawns start getting torn up in subdivisions with CC&Rs, then I'll say for sure that urban gardening has truly tipped.

In the meanwhile, if you're already tired of your fluffy summer reads, let me be one of perhaps the many friends who will recommend that you read The Tipping Point.

Front Yard Gardens Explode All Over Town

Our town is just bursting with gardens, many of them new conversions of yards and previously unused strips of bare land. It's inspiring to see the many ways people have found to grow their veggies in their landscaping. I'm seeing gardens in front of rentals, duplexes, and apartment buildings too. Here's just a few photos to inspire!

These curbside veggie boxes are already bursting with salad makings:


Growing your own food is both patriotic AND stylish in this flag-bearing garden with nice block walls:


These duplex-dwellers aren't missing out on the opportunity to grow some veggies on their lawn:


An eclectic garden full of onions, borage, and greens, mulched with straw paths:


And this beauty, nicely landscaped with flowers, paths, and a raised veggie bed in the middle of what was probably once a boring old lawn:

Words of Wisdom

We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.
- John W. Gardner

I thought of this quote as I biked to work last night. My bike count reached a new all-time high of 64. Basically, in any direction that I looked, I saw cyclists. Some of them parents toting kids on tag-a-longs or trailers, some of them workers returning home with messenger bags and ties, some college students, some kids on BMX bikes, but everywhere bicycles going this way and that.

To my left and right, new front and side-lawn gardens were popping up right and left. I'll try and add some photos soon of all the new creative food-growing landscaping I'm seeing. Clotheslines (or "solar clothes dryers" as right-to-dry activists are now creatively calling them) are flapping in the breeze, and neighbors sit on newly constructed front porches or stand by their garden fence talking. All of these people in ways small and large are taking the insoluble problems we now face and turning them into challenges to be met. Sure, it's a challenge to hang out your clothes when you could just throw them into the dryer in 1/8 of the time (though I would argue that the smell of line-dried laundry more than makes up for that one!) or to get out your helmet and rain jacket and bike off to work. The great thing is that almost everything that benefits the planet really benefits us even more. We get more exercise, more fresh air, we eat better, we know more of our neighbors when we engage in sustainable living. We're not saving the earth, we're saving ourselves.

Our Garden Featured on Local TV News

After the People magazine article came out, our local news station came and did a piece about it. I think they did a really nice job. It's great to see lawns-to-gardens getting so much coverage! Although I don't consider myself any kind of gardening expert in any way, it's nice to think that our experience might somehow inspire others to also give it a try.

I especially love the first line: "A Eugene family is featured in this week's People Magazine, not for red carpet fashion or celebrity scandal, but for their vegetable garden." Here's the link to the story.

Gardening Article Not Online (Yet?)

For those who have asked, I haven't been able to find the gardening article online at People magazine's website. Maybe it's just not up yet, but the site is different from the magazine by a fair bit.

Urban Gardening in People Magazine

Yes, it's officially hit the big mainstream, People magazine has an article on urban gardens, showcasing folks who have turned their lawns into veggie gardens and of course including Michelle Obama's new garden on the Whitehouse lawn. It's very exciting to see this trend not just in the latest issue of Permaculture Magazine but somewhere that it has the potential to be seen by (and influence) millions more mainstream Americans that might not otherwise be thinking about urban gardening.

And of course, I might just be mentioning this because our raised beds and my two cute kiddos are in the article! On newstands everywhere, today... the Blue Skies Urban Farm (no kidding, April Fool's Day is long past). Even one of our chickens, in People magazine, rubbing feathers with the celebs.

New Life Arrives in a Packet

When you're a kid, you anticipate Christmas by looking through toy catalogs and making your lists. I remember vividly sitting on the couch with my little sister dreaming of the Fisher-Price Castle set pictured on a catalog page. It had knights and princesses, king, queen, horses, carriage, a page with a smart green feather in his cap, and a dragon. A moat, a drawbridge, a dungeon. To our amazement, it arrived from Santa on Christmas morning, and we played with it for years (fighting over who got to play with that pink dragon every single time). Now my kids play with the set (and my son has surrendered the cool dragon permanently to my daughter for reasons of its pinkness).

For gardeners, the only thing that comes close to this childhood joy is The Seed Catalog, with its full-color pictures and promises of wonderful things in small bright packages. So with great joy I greeted the arrival of my seeds today. This year I bought them as a fundraiser for a friend's local charter school. What a great fundraiser - I got to buy something I need to support something that benefit's a neighbor's family. And the seeds were from Territorial Seed Company, a local favorite.

Being smarter than in years past, I first did an inventory of seeds left over from last year and only bought what I didn't already have. I am most excited about the new things I've never planted before. I want to set aside some space for an asparagus patch, and for rhubarb. I'm getting some cool UFO-like squashes in assorted colors, and rainbow chard instead of just plain chard. And of course we'll have all the old favorites - beans and peas, lettuces and sugar pie pumpkins. This year's garden project is to expand the front garden and add some cold-frames for more year-round gardening. Just like Christmas morning, I can't wait!

Our Very Own Pumpkin Patch

This year for the first time, we got our halloween pumkins from our very own pumpkin patch! In past years, we tried to grow them in the front yard (the deer ate every blossom before it ever fruited) and the back yard (on the North side of the house, not enough sun to ripen once the sun starts dipping to the South). But this year with our new fenced garden to the Southeast of the house, it was just perfect. For more about our adventures picking and carving them, you can see my Blue Skies Blog. But here I just want to exult a little bit in our new garden addition and how well it worked out this year.

If you've been reading here for awhile, you might remember that two years ago we got ten dumptruck loads of leaves dumped on that spot from our city's leaf collection program, and I spent half the winter raking them out over the garden area. Over the course of a year, they composted down until there was no longer a pile, just some very fertile earth. Then this spring we fenced off the area and it looked like this:


Then it ended up looking like this, the green beans got so overgrown I had a hard time even taking a photo, and they actually trellised themselves all the way up into the tree that was overhanging the fence, so we had green beans growing 15 feet up the tree. But the bottom line is that this new garden spot ended up being very productive - we harvested about 150 pounds of produce (I did include the pumpkins in that amount) from that front garden area.



We got tons of green beans, which did really well. The peppers flopped there, but did well in our raised beds in the back so that didn't matter too much, and we got a nice amount of tomatoes (but plan on trellising them next year for a better harvest). We also got fresh corn on the cob, lettuce, carrots, and potatoes, cucumbers, and now broccoli, chard, beets, cabbage, and kale. I was picking a bucket like this every couple of days throughout the harvesting season and its still doing well.

Next year's plan is to expand that area to an even bigger size, grow enough tomatoes to can tomatoe sauce, and have a salsa garden, as well as adding some strawberry beds and maybe raspberries. Garden dreams have a way of keeping me going through the winter season, and with this year's success, I'm even more energized for next year.

More Front-Yard Gardens Sprouting Everywhere

Time magazine has this story on "Edible Estates", discussing the return of gardens to front yards, and how it builds community. I know in my town, vegetables are sprouting up all over the place, and I think it's time I take out my camera and post a new edition of last year's "Grow Don't Mow" photo essay from my neighborhood.

In our own front yard, the cherry tree we planted with our dog Sabre's ashes last February is bearing beautiful fruit this year, and we've been enjoying "Sabre cherries" all week. All of my new evergreen blueberries fruited too so we'll be looking forward to tasting those soon! We went strawberry picking last week and got a flat of just gorgeous berries. It's amazing that many people may never know what real, fresh-picked strawberries actually taste like. Side by side with those overblown tasteless things they sell in the supermarket, there's just no comparison. I made up a big pan of shortcake, and we haven't gotten tired of it yet!

Taking a Page From Johnny Appleseed

As the news stories careen towards ever-scarier pronouncements (now even mainstream presses are admitting we might've passed peak oil, and objections to global warming have become the feeblest murmurs), one might wonder "What the heck can I do?"

When I was a kid, my grandparents and parents owned a theatre. During the summer months, they also did children's theatre productions. So I was a toy in Babes in Toyland, a dancing skunk in Johnny Appleseed, and a singing Gretel in Hansel and Gretel. Remembering the story of Johnny Appleseed (even though the version in the play is much dramatized from his real life), it occurs to me that we could all take a page from his book. Johnny Appleseed is known for planting orchards of apple trees, as well as fostering community, and helping out those less fortunate than himself (to the point where if people gave him clothing, he only kept the worst pieces for himself to wear and passed on the nicer items to others in need).

Right now, community and local food are two things that will be increasingly important as we head into an energy-poor future. For most of us, whether we live on suburban lots or in the country, we've got places we might be able to plant sustainable food sources for future harvesting. Of course, what is available to you to plant as part of your permanent landscaping will vary depending on your local climate, which direction your lot faces, how many shade trees you already have, and other variables. In our area, there are lots of options open for planting, including nuts like walnuts and filbert trees, a huge variety of fruit trees, and fruiting shrubs.

In a last fit of fall gardening, I picked up five more huckleberry bushes and three of a new variety of evergreen blueberry that fruits for 10 weeks a summer instead of fruiting in one short intense burst. I'm determined to both squeeze in more edible landscaping into areas that we have, and also to replace some of my least favorite shrubs (legacy of the previous owner) with fruit-bearing raspberries, huckleberries, blueberries, etc. We also planted a cherry tree this year, and I'm thinking of squeezing in a filbert somewhere. We have a yellow plum, purple free-stone plum. asian pear, and two red apple trees already.

Grow Don't Mow

One thing I love about my town is how it's okay to be unconventional. Certainly there are areas where perfect suburban lawns stretch identically to the curb, bordered by bark and carefully pruned shrubs (I remember driving up to one such location when we were house-hunting, and telling our real-estate agent to just drive away! I couldn't see myself living there). But there are lots of funky, fun parts of town where people feel free to get creative with their gardens. Many of them have lovely perennial beds, arbors spilling over with purple wisteria blossoms, and friendly patios and porches. But others have taken front-yard gardening to new heights with productive vegetable beds, even growing gorgeous cucumbers in the space betweeen sidewalk and curb.

















Here's a front yard with rows of corn and blueberry plants. An amazing amount of produce can be grown in the space that a current front lawn takes up. I recently read an article about how the city I live in has enough farmland to completely support the produce needs of our own population. But really, we wouldn't need all that farmland for produce if people make use of the space they already have available to them. Of course, with grocery-store prices still artificially low for trucked-in food, due to still-low gas prices, people will not want to uproot their lawns for food production. But I'm betting by the time we see an explosion in food prices as gasoline doubles or triples in cost, "Grow Don't Mow" will become a new mantra for many.

















This is one of my favorite local house-front gardens. They've planted tall bean trellises in such a way that it forms an outdoor room in front of their house. It's really gorgeous - they have a picnic table inside this wonderful bean-enclosed green room. What a clever idea!

















And some people even go so far as to giving away their curb-side produce for free. Talk about community-building and sharing. Isn't this awesome! Combine this with the insane number of fruit trees that are abundantly producing this year (and all the fruit rotting on the ground around the city, which is sad to see) and so many more people could be eating healthy, home-grown produce.
















Since we live in an area of the city where deer wander boldly into our front lawns, the grow-don't-mow approach doesn't work well for the front of our house, and I'm restricted to growing perennials that the deer don't touch, plus a few assorted herbs that they don't seem to care for (fennel, chives, parseley, mint) and save our food-growing for the fenced-in back yard. So I love to wander and look at what other people down in the deer-free parts of the city are doing.