Back to the Blog....Happy Spring

After a 5 month break from blogging I am back at it, sorry to have let so much time slip by. These months were somewhat discouraging, having lost the garden help I had, and it's interesting to note that my lack of enthusiasm for writing lasted as long as it took me to find the right people to join me in my work. My big yard is more than I can do by myself, but gardening in a non traditional way makes it difficult to find energetic and open minded workers. The average LA garden worker does not want to work side by side with me, and follow my specific methods. I work hard at adding organic matter to my beds, rather than sweeping or blowing it away and I do not like straight lines or shrubbery forced into geometric shapes. I aim to remove lawn and blacktop and I hate and I mean HATE people who do not treat my dirt with respect. These things are not normal. The woman who for 10 years helped me one day a week moved on in her life, and the crew that came a few hours a week for clean up turned out to be ignoring my rule of "No Chemicals" and was shown the door.

I was lucky enough to find Anthony's Green Gardening service. Anthony and his wife Donna are just getting established and they join me Monday mornings for 4 hours. We work hard! They are sweet, energetic and conscientious and I feel very lucky to have stumbled into their world. They understand. The garden is catching up to where I want it.

This week I have herb seeds in the light table. I'll be moving the Basil seedlings outside to acclimatize and filling that spot under the lights with a tray full of tomato seeds. I have pared it down to just 16 tomato varieties - not easy for the likes of me. One of the first things Anthony, Donna and I worked on was redoing the big herb garden- adding irrigation, digging out over zealous plants to move to confined areas, giving everything a haircut and relocating certain plants to better locations in the bed. It looks a little sad right now, but as the weather warms and I fill in the gaps it will be beautiful again. Over the next weeks I'll be scanning the farmers markets and nurseries for herb plants, in addition to the unusual things I am starting- Culantro, Papaloquelite, Vietnamese mint, Thai Roselle, Shiso and many more.

Here are a few photos from the garden this week. The Apricot tree with the beehives in back. Rainbow chard. The chard bed with garlic behind. The last of the male turkeys. He is a "Sweetgrass" and very beautiful. Behind is a "Royal Palm" hen. I'm glad to say that he grew out of humping a pumpkin and has found solace and satisfaction in the 3 hens that are his for the taking...