Official before picture

ivy in bags

three bags and one trash can full of ivy

Beginning steps

pulled lots of ivy off the fence

My first blog post

Okay, I have never blogged. I’ve never wanted to blog. I am really hopeful that this new project becomes something worthwhile so I am optimistically recording my progress from the start. If you are reading this, at least my goal is a bit closer.

So here’s the plan: to plant you-pick veggies in our alley for anyone who happens to stumble upon it.

A bit of history: we love vegetable, we hate grass, the backyard is mostly driveway, the front yard is sunny and spacious. Last year, we decided to cover the grass and plant vegetables in the front yard. After years of disappointing gardening attempts, we were surprisingly successful. Squashes, tomatoes, cucumber, collards, lettuce, jerusalem artichokes, eggplant, peppers, swiss chard and more! We harvested so much, we put out a daily box of produce for neighbors to share our bounty. It was gratifying to see kids picking their own tomatoes and tasting figs for the first time, local grandmothers collecting fresh kale and collards, neighbors seeing carrots pulled from the ground for the first time. Unfortunately, we have one neighbor who is more concerned that our yard didn’t conform with his concept of ‘aesthetically pleasing’ than anything else. He complained multiple time to the city (not to us, mind you). Our wonderful city made it very clear that we were well within our rights to grow produce in the front yard.  I should note, we live in a very depressed area, there is a rehab center right across the street and our city is often referred to as a food desert. The city has more important things to worry about than our neighbor’s perceived property value decrease.

I have always enjoyed friendly relations with my neighbors and am disappointed to find myself in this position but as we say, gam zu l’tovah: this too is for good.

I could put up a fence but I wanted to invite the neighbors in to pick their own. I decided to try moving the enormous, trailing squashes out of the front in an attempt to make the garden a bit more socially acceptable to my neighbor. While I totally think he is ridiculous and unreasonable and not very nice, if there is a way I can ease his angst without compromising my principles, I will try.

So I got to thinking, we have an alley behind the fence in the back and a strip, about four feet by sixty feet. I can plant the squashes there and train them up over the fence and into our backyard. Sounds good but that leaves lots of other space for more veggies. I’ve been inspired by the incredible edible movement http://www.ted.com/talks/pam_warhurst_how_we_can_eat_our_landscapes.html. What if we cleaned up that alley strip and planted veggies for anyone to pick.  Might be another of mom’s idealistic, implausible schemes (I might post about others sometime) but DH and kids seemed on board.

So yesterday we started. It may be a long haul. We pulled the ivy off the fence, trimmed a huge tree that hangs over the fence, measured out scrap wood, including old porch columns to frame the bed. Cutting the column in half was an adventure in itself. Probably hundred-year-old oak inside.

It happens to be the middle of Passover right now and I have a lot of things I should be doing but when I get excited about an idea…. Gotta sleep now in the hopes I can get up early enough to cook for Yom Tov and still have time to pull out the ivy in the alley.