from the ground up
Welcome to My Garden !
By Sherri La Rowe
We tend to measure the virus , and to connect with other world in terms of “ pre ” people , according to a survey by and “ post ”— Kennedy ’ s researchers at University of California , Davis with UC Agricultural assassination , 9 / 11 , internet , Covid . I , like so many home gardeners , and Natural Resources and international partners . measure my life in terms of preand post-garden . And though I
My first pre-Covid attempt at didn ’ t start my gardening adventure a garden cost me more than $ 350 . during Covid , it really took off during The Year the World Stood Still . bed cedar timbers , bagged com-
With fancy Lincoln log-style raised
And clearly , I wasn ’ t the only post and designer dirt , I happily one . A study of 3,700 people in planted a garden full of vegetable the US , Germany and Australia seeds , anticipating all the money revealed that over 75 % of people I would save that summer at the chose to garden as either new or grocery store . Each night I faithfully watered the plot to get it continuing hobbyists during Covid . They gave three main reasons : to established . That freshman first relieve stress , to grow their own try paid off conversely — for all the food as a method of avoiding the money I spent , I got one whopping
Sherri in her suburban curbside garden where pumpkins are spilling into the street . onion , two meager tomatoes ( that I saved from the stabs of bird beaks ), and three meager green beans . I know — you ’ re laughing . I was crying . And a lot angry . I was heartbroken and embarrassed .
Truth is , I knew better . My mother worked as a child sharecropper farmer in the 40s and 50s with her mom and seven siblings . They hand-harvested tobacco and cotton so they could live for “ free ” in a series of borrowed farmhouses . She would have told me to compost food scraps and fall leaves , but since I started so late in the spring , I had to skip the cost-saving resources and go straight to the yuppie designer garden . My maiden voyage into gardening was an expensive disaster .
The next year ( during Covid ) I considered giving up , but the call for fresh homegrown food was too strong and the empty store shelves urged me into trying harder this time . Some accidentally-placed herbs thrived in the area where the veggies had previously suffered — mint , thyme , oregano and chives now produce year-round . I know now that the sunlight was squelched by a “ trash tree ” thrusting its annoying plate-sized leaves over the fence from my neighbor ’ s yard to steal the sunlight from my original garden . My dear husband worked with the neighbor to be allowed to cut down that tree — their garden was suffering , too , before the tree came down .
So starts my Covid-era saga of stealing back the land on the front curb of my suburban house to create a sun-loving front yard garden . The process started innocently enough — I asked my husband to take out a shrub in the front yard that
34 plenty I spring sowing 2024