My parents let me take over the dirt patch in the front yard when I told them I wanted to start gardening. They even gave me a small seed fund (forgive the pun) to get started. I bought a book to learn more about gardening; the book is called “Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home Scale Permaculture”. It taught me a lot about how nature creates self-sustaining ecosystems. The book appealed to my sense of aesthetic inspired by years of living in Northside Berkeley during college. It made me think of the organic farm co-ops, the Berkeley Rose Garden, and the hills near the Berkeley Botanical Garden and the Lawrence Berkeley Labs. I miss running through those hills and buying produce from the farmer’s market every Thursday morning. So it has been really nice to be able to harvest little things like the red chard from our front lawn. Here are some pictures of the garden that’s been a source of small joy during the pandemic.
My mom makes miso soup with the stalk and leaves of red chard. It gives it a deep flavor as if the miso soup is made from bone broth. Our garden doesn’t produce nearly enough red chard leaves for her soup so we have to supplement the recipe with store bought red chard.
I think these nasturtium leaves look like little puppy paws or a baby’s hand. I high five them in the morning and they bounce up and down and make me happy. I can’t wait to see the flowers in the spring.
I spotted a caterpillar feasting on the leaves of milkweed flowers. The nice thing about permaculture garden is that there’s lots of stuff for critters to eat so they don’t all go for the same stuff that humans like to consume like red chard.
This little bird flew into my shot while I was trying to take pictures of the flowers. The hummingbirds also seem to visit more often now that our front yard has more flowers.
There are two squirrels that think that our backyard is their home, which it is. We have to share the avocados, guavas, and other fruits with them. They also like to hide my parents’ golf balls strewn around the yard. My dad found fifteen golf balls hidden in different places around the backyard. The squirrels must think that the balls will ripen or sprout if they are buried under the dirt.
These flowers are a hit with the hummingbirds. The nice thing is that they bloom all year-round
This is my next project, which is a keyhole-shaped garden in our backyard that will house herbs and salad greens. I am in the process of mulching, which is just gathering leaves and sometimes compost to nourish the soil. The bricks were lying around the backyard, half or entirely buried under the dirt. I dug them up to create a low barrier for the mulch.