This has been an unusually active late October/early November. Not just everyone running the emotional gamut of processing the historic shocking election of Donald Trump, but all sorts of stuff going on here, “on the ground.” And I do wonder: might our current zeal for getting things done be one way of processing difficult emotions? Somehow, by mulching garden beds — layering with manure, leaves, straw, compost, grass — might we be composting our own “waste,” to regenerate in ways we do not now understand?

Greenhouse

After months of dreaming, and then planning, and then ordering materials, the new winter greenhouse, re-purposed from the old garage that housed my son Colin’s start-up Garden Tower Project, is rising up! We would have finished it last Thursday, but ran out of a few pieces which we have now ordered. YES! Thanks to Bread and Roses founders Salem and Jonas and our intrepid builder David Bunge for the construction.

The greenhouse occupies the front half of the garage; in back we now have a bunkhouse/tool room and a drying room for herbs. Rebecca plans on starting plants there in January.

Meanwhile, Rebecca has seedlings in the original greenhouse (built over the back stairs to the Overhill house) already started.

 

Garden Beds

Three of us have been feverishly working to layer as much carbon and nitrogen as possible on the garden beds before winter, aided by the unseasonably mild weather. Grass, chopped hay, leaves, manure, compost — all grist for nature’s mill. By this time, the beds look positively comfy, and believe me, are actually soft to the touch!

I bet we will be growing twice as much food next year.

Here’s the view from today, after a big wind came and scoured a few of the higher beds. Luckily this happened after a big rain, so most of the top layer of leaves stayed in place.

BTW: Most of our leaves this year Rebecca and Brie harvested from one old man’s front porch, where he had stored 60 bags of leaves! And was SO glad they were going to a good cause. And says that he will 60 more bags of leaves ready in two weeks.

The horse manure we get from a stable just outside town. The grass comes from neighbors. And the chips, lining the paths between the beds, from trees that come down in the neighborhood. All FREE.

Community Dinners . . .

. . . continue weekly,

with last Wednesday’s dinner featuring a family that has actually lived in the neighborhood for nine years — and didn’t know about us! “We live over in the student section,” laughs Heather,  a mom with two kids, Adina and Alex.

Amazingly enough, one of our kid regulars, Asiri, who arrived late Wednesday with her mother Mariella and brother Juakim, was overjoyed to discover that her best friend on the bus that takes them both to University Elementary School was here! “See Mom! I told you so! I told you Adina was real!”

Asiri wanted a photo of the two of them, but NOT, she admonished, with her brother. I convinced her to let me take one of all three of them first.

I’ve already told Alex that we will be calling her to become the teenage advisor to the children’s garden that we plan for next year. She’s up for it. YES!

I’ll end with another one of Brie’s Dad’s little sculptures, in the Overhill front garden.