Fall Garden: Week 13. Personal Integration

Yesterday, I gave my backyard homestead a good raking, and then sat back for a bit to enjoy it.

@mattlovell's bonsai rail

The lemon and orange trees are loaded with ripening fruit. Meanwhile, the baby avocado tree has doubled in size since my son planted it for my birthday last December.

Avocado and orange

Underneath the lemon tree

The vegetable garden just finished producing 12 pounds of green beans, and is now getting the ball rolling with broccoli, cukes, peppers, chard, and Brussels sprouts.

Broccoli developing a giant head

Cucumbers, beets, chard, beans...

Brussels sprouts

The hens are taking turns molting, so they have stopped laying for the winter. Our Americaunas have nearly ceased to lay entirely due to age, so I am starting to count on buying more chicks next spring. We sold a few dozen eggs this year, and I enjoyed that sense of surplus abundance. I also want to be more conscientious about preserving eggs next time so that I won't have to go back to buying grocery store ones like I must do this week. Sigh.

Wildflower peers through the wire divider.

Fall here in San Bernardino is a lovely, mild season after the dog days of triple digit summer heat. Flowers bloom, scenting the air and attracting birds to my backyard sanctuary.

I have been saving an embarrassment of bottles for a bottle wall to replace the wire divider between the back patio and freepooping chickens. I want to do a mosaic backsplash behind the pond, and cement in the rock and granite pond surround with embedded planters.

The fishpond is set up with a grow tray for aquaponic fodder production. We tested it out in the early summer, and wow! A $13 sack of barley seed becomes plumped up superfood in a matter of days.

Our chickens eat fodder like noodles!

The guys recently finished building the future home of the main consumers planned for all that barley fodder: meat rabbits! We can't wait to install the hutches under the lemon tree, and start hanging out in the rabbit show circuit to find the best possible breeding bunnies. Raised with love and plenty of freedom on the grass pasture, their litters will provide lots of ethical organic meat to my family. https://steemit.com/homestead/@mattlovell/new-rabbit-hutch

All things, after all, do pass away into mortality, and free up their resources to their successors. So, too, with plants, whose carcasses and trimmings get dumped into the compost corner. Ours isn't the best system since it lacks stalls to keep the composting in stages. Improving it is on the to-do list. For now, it is a great concession to wildlife and microorganisms. Lizards and interesting insects thrive on my mini farm because of "unimproved" ecosystems left to them.

The front yard has pretty much been neglected for a few months while I recovered the veggie garden from the clutches of crabgrass. I discovered there is an some sort of local project that lists fruit trees accessible to the public. That's the primary reason why I planted our red guava right along the sidewalk. I set my intentions to expand my family farm out into my community by placing surplus fruits for free along my sidewalk. It'll be time to put sacks full of windfall lemons out, and I am eager to add anything else that might assist someone in my community.

Speaking of community, a lot of plans are percolating inside my skull to expand this food reforestation of my neighborhood. There is what used to be a rosegarden in the park that was allowed to die off during water rationing. I bet I could slip in some guerrilla gardening food plants under the radar. Something unobtrusive to start, like garlic. Ultimately, I want to help create a community garden dedicated to feeding the hungry in that park. Only time will tell if it occurs with undercover planting missions, or with the blessings of the city government.

As Voltaire said, "I will cultivate my garden!"

And, the Garden Quilt marches quietly along, one stitch at a time, reflecting the deep and quiet joy of personal integration. Where banal chores and art are one Sacred Dance.

Love,cat
@creationofcare

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