Rain

It's been raining quite steadily this afternoon, as predicted. That was one reason I wanted to get the chunks of concrete and rocks picked up yesterday so that the rain could soak into the ground where I want to dig.

The rain is supposed to continue tomorrow and perhaps later in the week, too. This is good news for Southern California!

When a tree falls

Late Saturday afternoon, I went out to the back of the duplex to lay out a sweater to dry. The tree had been cut down! Although the tree lost it leaves in winter, during the summer it almost completely shaded the back yard. Now with the tree gone, I could make a raised bed in the back of the house instead of building a planter for the driveway.


This is the walkway from the kitchen door to the back of the house (facing south). The building on the left is the neighbors' garage. The ugly, enormous electrical panel has recently been installed for the duplex and the neighbors' (my landlords) house. The walkway is just under four feet wide, and it's about seventeen feet from the water tap on the lower right to the end of the duplex. You can barely see the stump at the end of the neighbors' garage.




This is the lovely back yard! This is facing east with the side of the duplex (my bedroom) facing south. The yard is about six feet wide and about twelve feet long from the corner of the duplex to the water heater shed. The fences between the two sides of the duplex and between my side and the landlords' house have gates, so clearance needs to be allowed for the swing of the gate.

I think the corner against the duplex will be the sunniest spot for a garden. Because I already have four-foot length boards, I think I will stay with that plan.





The view facing west. The solid portion of the fence with the other neighbor is about five and half feet high. The water heater shed is about six and half feet high. So both structures cast sizable shadows.

















The tree stump still needs to be removed. The tree had grown around some chunks of concrete that randomly and unevenly pave part of the yard, so the landlord said the stump has to be "dissolved." I told him I hope it's not with nasty chemicals.

I can't really start digging until the crew have finished removing the stump. But, this afternoon, eager to get started, I picked up rocks.

It's a start

Today when I was picking up my order of salad greens from Path to Freedom, I told Anais about the first stumbling steps I've taken to try grow some vegetables. She suggested I post pictures of my attempts.

So this is a start. One thing I've learned from the Dervaes family is not to wait for your "ideal" growing situation but to do what you can with what you have now.

I rent one side of a duplex, so I'm restricted in some of the changes I can make (like ripping out the lawn or concrete driveway). I had decided that the driveway was the only place that receives enough light, so I was going to build a four-foot by four-foot box planter for the side of the driveway per the plans in Mel Bartholomew's book Square Foot Gardening.

So yesterday's adventure was to purchase the wood to build the box. Earlier I had checked one hardware store that had a limited selection of lumber, but they couldn't even cut the boards to size for me. Yesterday I went to another hardware/lumber store, but they didn't have boards in the correct width.

Bartholomew suggests six inches high for the side of the box, but that seemed a little shallow, so I wanted at least eight inches. Twelve would be better, but then the box would get too heavy once it was filled with soil.

So I ended up at the "contractor's" lumber yard, where I found an eight-inch wide board of knotty pine, which the attendant cut into four-foot lengths.

I wanted plywood for the bottom so the planter would be portable, but plywood is expensive! So I held off hoping to find a four-foot square piece some place.

My next stop was a nursery to buy makings for soil. So now I had boards and the raw ingredients for soil.