Yesterday, Alex and I both played hookie from church. Now that neither of us have a regular 9-5 job anymore, it turns out that 8:15 is awfully early to wake up on a Sunday. After we finally got out of bed, we decided that this was as good of a time as any to attend what I lovingly call Church of the Urban Garden in our front yard.
Like most of our urban homesteading projects (cooking, cheese making, beer making) my partner Alex is the real mastermind and I am the very enthusiastic worker bee. After being disappointed by our “learning garden” last year, Alex spent all winter pouring over books and farmers almanacs and organic gardening websites to discover how we could improve upon our garden. I, on the other hand, get painfully bored even thinking about gardening books. For me, gardening is a welcome escape from the world of computers, books and how-to manuals. So while he meticulously lays out where each vegetable will get it’s optimal amount of sun and worries about the PH balance of our compost, I am usually quite happy to weed where he tells me to weed and plant where he tells me to plant.
In fact, yesterday, there was a lot of weeding to do, as we cleared out old rows of
summer plants and got ready to plant things for the fall. That was fine with me, as I find weeding to be second only to chopping vegetables as a supremely meditative activity. I first discovered the meditative quality of food preparation while interning at the LA Catholic Worker, and I find pulling weeds to be equally quieting. Yesterday morning was the best “me” time I’d had in ages, in spite of my unfortunate choice of an ant hill as a place to temporarily sit down (for hours afterward, my entire lower half felt like it was on fire!) Maybe that’s why I’ve been reluctant to become more of an ‘expert’ gardener or cook. I don’t want to have to waste my food prep time actually thinking about anything.

- Who knew homemade compost could be so beautiful?!
When I volunteered at the LA and DC Catholic Workers, I was always in awe of their ability to take food that had been thrown out by restaurants and grocery stores and turn it into balanced, delicious meals for dozens (sometimes hundreds!) of people. Likewise, I am bursting with pride over our little garden and how we have taken what was a neglected, sandy, trash-filled plot of land and turned it into a real, food producing vegetable garden, using food scraps turned into compost, careful tending and a belief in small miracles. It never ceases to amaze me how Jesus’ loaves and fishes miracle is still at work in so many little corners of communities.
Nothing makes me happier than being able to show our four year old neighbor how tomatoes grow, or letting him help us weed. It’s great to have the elderly couple next door compliment our okra as they go on their evening walk, or have our neighbor (who was originally a bit skeptical about a vegetable garden) ask for our advice on fertilizers
In the end, we had cleared three rows, planted a row of cauliflower and brought in a huge collection of kale, carrots, beets, okra,
cucumbers and one absolutely monstrous zucchini! It looked pretty satisfying (and intimidating!) seeing all of the food that we grew ourselves laid out in our kitchen like that. We ended up pickling the beets, cucumbers and half of the carrots, and the okra always get used somehow. But if you know of any good giant zucchini recipes, or know someone who wants a half dozen carrots, let us know. We can only convince the neighborhood kids to carry home so many of them!
Now, to go find more aloe for my poor legs…
