A Closer Look at Our Little Acre

We got many compliments on the previous edit, and I am learning to slow down and focus in with my video camera. This edit reflects more detail.

The Sonoran Desert has shapes, colors, and textures large and small. On our own little acre where we have cleared and planted, each plant has become a familiar friend.

The soundtrack is Brahim Fribgane playing the oud. Born and raised in Morocco, Brahim Fribgane brings to his music the rich and varied musical styles he grew up with - North African, Gnawa, Berber, Arabic and Andulusian music. His oud style ranges from the clear, "singable" melodies of folkloric Berber songs to beautifully complex and soulful Arabic music.

November at San Simeon

The heat of summer is forgotten as we wear long pants and a sweater in the mornings, then shed layers as the sun in a cloudless blue sky heats up the days. We had some rain a week ago. One hardy creosote bush responded with flowers. The devil's tongue barrel cactus is budding with deep red flowers.

We have spotted the owl in the eucalyptus tree several times. Judging by the offal on the park bench directly below its perch, and the scattered feathers on the driveway, the owl has been a successful hunter.

Much thanks for the many kind comments.

"Thanks Shari for sending the video and well done Tom-you certainly capture the desert garden, loved the music and was that an owl because it was great capture!" 

 " OMG. ... This is amazing, beautiful, sculptural, spiritual, melodic, under the watchful eye of the owl, and the moons glow. Wow. The hardscape, the stately cactus the protector of the many pots, and steps of continuous beauty. You have created, recreated the essence of Turkey, Australia, India etc, all them warmer exotic places that I have unfortunately not gotten to yet,. Congrats on so much hard work, and grace and beauty that you have shared with us and all that come by your place." 

 "What a beautiful garden that we would like to discover for real !" 

"Very beautiful yard, vegetation and even an owl! I love the editing with such lovely music as always." 

"WONDERFUL!!!! I really plan to see all that/YOU next… May? I hope I hope!!!!" 

 "One word: Fabulous!! makes us wish we were there." 

"🙏🏼 What a masterpiece you’ve created! The video is an amazing meditation in the midst of chaos." 

"Lovely lovely lovely! Thank you!!!" 

"So very nice! Great job, Tom. Such a perfect sanctuary! Thanks for sending, Shari! Always love seeing your place, in real life or in pictures!" 

 "Thank you for sharing views of your magical desert gardens. It's raining cats and dogs here--has been for days and no end in sight. ... It's such an interesting mix of plants, pots, whimsical items, paths, walls, furniture and level upon level of beauty. You two are sensational stewards of the land." "A lot of work but looks beautiful and well done!" 

 "Your garden arts are amazing, so to know you think Tom’s display being wonderful is quite the compliment!" 

"What a wonderful tour of your Oasis. Wish I could teleport down there for a few days and suck up the sounds and smells you capture so well." 

"Love the movie….the ending is WOW. Your place is so wonderful….I love it and miss my time there." 

"Thanks, that’s wonderful., and so much warmer and sunnier than say, Whidbey Island November-June. You’re lucky to have all those wonderful rocks to play with. " 

 "WOW.........put me into another place inside and out. Especially like the owl and crescent moon at the end of day. Thx a million for sharing your WONDER FULL garden."

Taking Care of Things

Plowing the east forty, Ballard,
in anticipation of growing edibles.

The lord of a manor ought to take care of the estate. It's an idea that has evolved in me since the first house I bought, and even earlier. I would like to think it is not a possessive or a selfish thing, but a matter of stewardship.

Gardening, the most popular hobby in Merca, can teach the value of stewardship. Yes, the property is mine in fee simple. Yes, I can do with it whatever I want, land use regulations permitting. But working with living nature teaches humility. I am only a small part of the whole. As Shari often reminds me, the land talks to you over time and tells you what it wants.

Parking out the front acreage, Terra Bella.

Living at 5224 in the U-District, we got the idea of digging up the small, unkempt, weed-infested, sad excuse of a backyard lawn and planting a vegetable garden. Mind you, in those heady days of juvenile adolescence, the idea of taking care of anything took a distant back seat to being cool and having fun. Four boys fresh out of high school quickly ran that poor house into increasing states of dilapidation. But we did have our moments of clean-up and show-off. The vegetable garden was one such example. That first year we had a bumper crop of tomatoes the likes of which I have never since equaled.  Then, after that first summer of planting, distracted by the need to to be cool and having fun (a need exhausted only by growing up), we largely abandoned farming and the backyard restored itself to increasing states of dilapidation.

The front acreage, Terra Bella.

The Ballard house was my first possession in fee simple. It, like the U-District house, had a postage stamp sized lot with a backyard that had a strip suitable for growing edibles. Memories of that one successful tomato harvest propelled me to rent a cultivator and plant vegetables. I forget what we planted. Zucchini, tomato, green beans and the like, I suppose. Previous owners had graced the 1912 craftsman house with pretty ornamentals that bloomed over spring and summer: huge lilac bushes, honeysuckle, penstemon, and an apple tree. We planted annuals in hanging baskets on the front porch and in the half whiskey barrel on the back deck.

My move to Whidbey Island was cataclysmic. I had been a city boy. Shari was the Island Girl from the dense greenery of Puget Sound countryside, living on sheep farms, wooded acreage, and in island villages. She was already in tune with creating, maintaining, and savoring gardens: vegetable, fruit and floral.

Shari's garden, Terra Bella.

I became the lord of a much larger manor. My palette was five acres, later increased to ten. Most of it was forested with large, but not ancient, cedars with occasional Doug firs and hemlock. The land had been logged and clear-cut several times previously, but we inherited some pretty large trees together with lots of alder, blackberries and nettles. Stuff grows quickly in Lower Alaska. Some two acres around the house had been cleared and served as a lawn.

We enjoyed eight years on the aptly named Terra Bella Lane. Working the land became a full time pastime in addition to reworking the entire 4,200 square foot, eighteen room, three level house. We purchased Scotty the tractor mower to cut fields of grass, weeds and nettle fields. Over time, some three acres were parked out. We took out a shabby truck garden and rabbit cages that framed the grand driveway entrance. With the help of Randy, his son, their bulldozer, backhoe and lowboy, the hillside was terraced, the back acres partially cleared, and its swamp dug out to create a pond. On the terraced land, we deer-fenced about a tenth of an acre, used landscaping blocks and railroad ties to build raised gardens where Shari planted, grew and maintained everything from strawberries to espaliered apple trees and even grape vines. On the second five acres, I spent many an active summer day clearing paths to access, define, and enjoy our domain.

The pond in back, Terra Bella.

The second owner later, we had a chance to visit our old domain. Shari's and my purchaser was a trust fund baby with motorcycles, a civilian AK47, and houses in California and Mexico. He had neglected the garden and the park setting.  Everything reverted to an overgrown state, then he sold the property at a substantial loss. There was some hope. The young families that were living there when we visited were beginning to reclaim and rework the garden.

We moved to San Simeon where our little acre of the Sonoran Desert has become our domain. Thanks to the desert climate, we get plenty of opportunity to sit outside and contemplate nature. In my time as a lord of a manor, I have noticed how infinitely enjoyable it is to sit outside and watch things grow, listen to bird calls, and watch bugs fly and lizards do push-ups. Sitting inside for the same amount of time, even inside an attractively appointed space, is just staring at walls.

Ever wonder why we long to look out windows, and rarely in?
Looking out front, Terra Bella.

The illustrative story that comes to mind is from Terra Bella. Not long after we bought and fixed up our five acres on Whidbey, we invited my family for a day visit. It turned out to be one of those precious sunny days for which Puget Sound is justly famous. Inside the house, the conversation awkwardly turned to tape recordings. That is, the "same old, same old" subjects of conversation that dominated family dialogue for decades. It occurred to me to move the party outside onto the lawn. So we laid out picnic blankets on the parked-out acreage in front. People sat and relaxed. The need diminished to have to say something to keep a conversation going. Silence was not awkward. It was natural. And if someone did say something, it was relevant.

Gardening is working to evoke nature's beauty and abundance. For good reason, it is the most popular hobby. Gardening is a metaphor for everything in life. I wonder why we as a society have not learned good stewardship from gardening.

My idea of a nice living room.

Bed Number Four

Concrete to build up the low end. This is the area where,
the following weekend, I dug a post hole through a
cowboy concrete foundation.

I had forgotten how much work went into the three raised beds in our garden. I remembered over Memorial Day weekend. A lot.

We now have a fourth bed. It's just like the other three: parallel with them, but staggered a bit to the south.

It took a day and two runs in Smoke Ganesha, our Ford Explorer, to collect some seventy concrete blocks, thirty concrete caps, six sacks of concrete and four sacks of gravel. I was exhausted just loading them in the car, then unloading and piling them up in the garden next to the chosen location. A total of about a ton and a quarter, but Ganesha's tires held up.

It took all of the long weekend to build the bed. A day to lay the lines and dig the trench. (Can you spell, c-a-l-i-c-h-e?) That included sifting the dirt for small rocks which I treasure because they make great material for the paths in the gully.

Day Two was spent figuring out what was level, building up the lower end with concrete, then laying the blocks. Liquid Nails is good stuff. Then off to the local dump cum garden dirt place to stock up on twenty-five bags of, well, garden soil. 

Memorial Day we dug inside the bed to sift more dirt, then turn it over and mix it with the bagged soil. We needed more soil. Off to the mega hardware store for another fifteen bags. Mixed them in with the sifted dirt from the original trench dig. Of all the stuff we bought to make this fourth bed, the garden soil was the biggest expense — by far.

Of course, writing about a day's work merits a little explanation. It means no more than six hours in the early morning. For one, it gets hot. For another, I'm no spring chicken. I get tired to the point where I can't think too straight. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out how I had the stamina to build the first three beds, except it was easier to have a truck deliver two yards of garden soil than buying forty bags worth.

Shari planted tomatoes, draping shade cloth over them to afford some protection from the relentless afternoon sun and hundred degree plus heat.

New, fourth bed canopy frame completed,
with two connections to the existing
three-bed canopy frame.

We had to build shade. That was this last weekend. Another trip to the mega hardware store to stock up on twenty foot long boards, treated 4x4 posts, angle brackets, curtain hooks, shade fabric, rope, and screws. I had enough energy left to paint all the boards and cut the smaller ones to size in anticipation of the great erection.

Next day I had to dig two post holes, one on each end of the bed. First was an easy sixteen inches through relatively soft dirt. I was about to plant the post in concrete when it occurred to me that I'd better dig the second post hole before I committed to anything.

Smart move. It turned out the south end was centered over cowboy concrete. There's an old, barely buried foundation that runs from the neighbor's driveway into our garden space. It has branches. I've dug into it in several places. It is old concrete. That means it has had decades to cure and get harder and harder. It means that when I hit it with my iron pike, it chipped off just enough to create a little cement dust and the iron bounced back — a rather jarring experience. It's thick enough that even a sledge hammer will not crack it.

Saturday was spent chipping away and pulverizing old concrete, alternating sledge hammer on chisel with the iron pike. The original design for a twelve inch hole was modified. I got eight inches out of that cowboy concrete and never reached its bottom. Enough for me. Bring on the posts, the level, the concrete mix, and the garden hose.

Another day was spent measuring levels and erecting the boards. Looked nice, I thought, until the neighbor complimented and made an observation. He's a retired builder who is engaged in adding a two-level guest house overlooking our property (another story) and with whom, along with his loyal worker Jesus (not the Christ; he's Mexican), I just recently helped build a 18,000 pound, almost sixty foot long, concrete block privacy wall on our property line (yet another forthcoming story). Howard said I needed to attach the new canopy frame to the existing one. Otherwise, one or the other new 4x4 post would snap in a good wind.

We get lots of good wind in Tucson. Years ago a gust snapped a mature palo verde tree trunk. A few months ago, a good gust snapped the fig tree we had planted in the very same place we constructed the fourth bed. Snapped not just the fig tree trunk, but the stakes holding it up.

Bed number four.

Testing Howard's advice, I pushed each of the two new posts. The whole structure wobbled. Then I pushed one of the six 4x4 posts holding up the canopy over the first three beds. Nothing moved. Howard had a good idea.

The next day I attached the fourth bed structure to the big one. Lot less wobble.

Then Shari went to work measuring, sewing, reinforcing and grommetting (is that a verb?) the landscape fabric. We put it up a couple of days ago.

Looks nice. I can hardly wait for the tomatoes. Thank God we are running out of space inside the Great Fence of San Simeon.

Getting Active Again

I'll blame it on El Niño. Late 2014 through the "Holiday Season" and into January of 2015, I was pretty active with various outdoor projects. This late autumn and winter, of 2015-6 we've had more rain and grey days. Not so active.

Now we've had a stretch of warmer weather with clear skies, and I feel as if I have emerged from quasi-hibernation. This kind of weather begs a person to go outside and be active.

Stepping stones seem insignificant,
until your back strains trying to lift one.

In the garden, Shari is cultivating, planting, tending and watering kai-lan (a type of Chinese broccoli or kale), garlic and herbs while I weed grass and Nazar the Wonder Dog watches.

There are a couple of crossings of the dry watercourse that's at the bottom of Coat Hanger Valley.  I have been thinking of a bridge, or maybe stepping stones. Scrounging around our acre, I found enough large flat rocks suitable for my back to embed as stepping stones.

The trail to the south point.

I have been mining more rocks to support the bench I dug into the east side of the Valley that serves as a trail to the south. The trail has been expanded to the southern most boundary marker of our Sonoran acre, and a small area cleared and flattened there on the hillside. The site is hidden from neighbors and offers an interesting view south looking over lower San Simeon Drive, parts of Tucson, and the Santa Rita Mountains.

The west side.

Then there is the west side which slopes down into another little wash. Only a few weeks ago my neighbor showed me the actual location of our northern most boundary marker. Of course, I had to clear that area of our Sonoran acre and a path down to get to it.  The last few days I have been working on a new cinderblock wall that will help define the path down the slope to that north boundary marker.

Four Asian solar lanterns
("Made in China") by five steps.

I am also stuccoing and painting other cinderblock retaining walls on the west side that I had constructed from material salvaged from the former backyard garden. (See 500 Bricks & 600 lbs of Sand.) Stuccoed and painted with the neutral house color, the grey concrete blocks disappear.

Tiny cactus flowers remind us of spring.
Eucalyptus leaves offer a sense of scale.

Which is what I did with the four grey plastic solar light lanterns I found at Home Depot: make them blend in with earth tones. I spend a delightful couple of hours at the garage work bench, garage door open and sunlight pouring in, wearing my bib-overalls and carefully painting the grey lanterns with the beige-colored house paint. The little LED's help define the steps when they light up in the dark like small stars.

Yep, it's the time of year when I can wear bib-overalls and work outside all day. It's a great season for outdoor work.

Lazy Cactus

 It just reached over to the agave stalk and leaned on it.

I thought the windstorm would knock it over, but like hung-over Lee Marvin and his horse in Cat Ballou, this cactus is desperately resting, or perhaps happily leaning, upon something stiffer than itself.

There are plenty of days like this: leaning on a buddy, or marching to the beat of a different drummer, or simply being lazy.

Raise the Baja Arizona Tricolor (Garden Shade - Three)

What a way to celebrate Bastille Day! Hoisting the Baja Arizona tricolor (sand-brown, sand-brown & sand-brown)!

Shari is our Betsy Ross. She finished a day's worth of sewing in the morning. By afternoon, the second and third stripes were mounted and all three colors are now billowing in the wind.

Now all we need is to sing the Baja Arizona anthem each morning at sunrise. Is it "La Cucaracha"?

The flag I refer to, of course, is a very large one that flies flatly, tethered at both ends, as shade over the three garden beds.

The shade is spectacular — even in the cloudy, overcast days of the monsoon season. There is a feeling of relief underneath, yet no shortage of wonderfully diffused sunlight.

The flag is tethered with scores of
"S"-shaped curtain pins holding
grommets to eye-hooks.

We're hopeful the lush green plants will appreciate our modifications to the Sonoran Desert environment.

Now our attention turns towards a patio seating area within the east side of the garden. It's a place to sit under the shade of a palo verde tree
and contemplate the environment.

Shari wants to plant grapes and have the vines trained on an overhead trellis. Whoa boy!  More post-hole digging!

Garden Shade

Shari puts the final touches on the first, middle sheet of
shade cloth. There will be two more sheets.

Morning gardening

It seems to me that pretty much everything in the desert appreciates a little shade, so an integral part of any vegetable garden is shade.

Shade fabric is a popular item here in Tucson. Trouble is, so are wind gusts.

The first of three sheets is up. Shari folded and sewed each six-foot wide end, reinforcing it with cotton twill, then hammered in ten rivet-like grommets on each end. Meanwhile, your author strung seven lines of rope east-west across the length and the fabric is tucked north-south over and under the ropes.

Hog wire serves as a sturdy and movable frame for the
scarlet runner beans.

We had a nice windy rain storm last night. Four of us sat in front of our house, under the eves, watching the spectacle, feeling the heavy raindrops on our legs, smelling the humid air, and watching sheets and bolts of lightning over town. It was a feast for all of the senses; way better than anything TV can offer.

We watched the single length of shade fabric billowing in the wind, barely held by the rope matrix. The fabric and its grommets held.

Today, Shari is working on the next two sheets. They will be tucked over-and-under in an opposite pattern to the middle sheet, which hopefully will make the rope matrix more secure.

In the meantime, Shari is turning the desert green. Shari has a touch for growing basil. Basil loves heat and sun. How she got it to grow on overcast, chilly Whidbey Island is beyond me. She has three kinds flourishing here. Their flavor is very pungent.

They say that about food grown in the desert. It has
intense flavor. You get less product because of the intense climate, but it's way more concentrated.

The scarlet runner beans are beginning to run. Shari started the seedings in pots in the backyard where there's shade. Transplanted into the garden, they struggled from shock and sun. Now they are reaching and climbing up the hog wire frame.

Melons and cucumbers are also thriving. We've been eating and giving away cherry tomatoes. The little peach and loquat trees are hanging in there as we set up trellises to train their branches to create an espalier.

I wonder if they have slugs in the Sonoran Desert. They were our nemesis on Whidbey. Here it may be grasshoppers.

FOOTNOTE:  Shari's 4,000+ sq.ft. garden on Whidbey Island:

Three varieties of apple on an espalier

Four levels of terraces.

Looking up towards the house

Grape vines grown from sticks; cuttings from
autumn pruning at the local vineyard near Langley.

The Great Fence of San Simeon

On Saturday, May 31, 2014, the Great Fence of San Simeon was completed.

As the last gate was being covered with hardware cloth to complete the compound enclosure, sure enough, a large lizard had wandered inside and was unable to tunnel or climb out -- a good indication of the value of the fence.

We have nothing against lizards. They eat bugs. I teased and chased it out with a piece of PVC pipe and the garden hose.

Which reminds me of the great walls that we humans erect to keep our kind in and the other kind out. Like the Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall, the Israeli West Bank Wall, and the other great fence in Arizona that we justify in the name of Homeland Security.

Then we have the walls we build in our minds, like Fox Noise and MSNBC. But enough of comparing people with varmints.

We hope to invite many people into our new garden. And they will also be free to leave.

Our great fence isn't a wall to divide people against each other. It's a fence to keep out rabbits, rats, chipmunks, squirrels, and javelinas.

Odds are, the smaller mammals can climb the fence, and we'll need bird netting for when anything gets close to being ripe, but the fence does give a sense of insular protection.

Perhaps it's a false sense, like the great rabbit-proof fence of Western Australia.

Still, it's an aesthetic of what can be done with an long and heavy iron pike, lots of skin-piercing aviary wire, nasty treated wood (warped as they are), ready-made (thank God) metal gate frames, a rake, concrete and plastic ties.

My work is largely done, although paths to two of the gates need improving. Now it's Shari's turn. She gets to turn the desert into a vegetable paradise. So far, she loves the morning watering of her little green babies.

Gates with Thresholds to Nowhere

The newest curb cut makes the garden entrance more inviting.

It was a delightful long weekend spent working on the new garden. The three gates to nowhere got concrete brick thresholds so they shut and seal along the bottoms, the last two post holes were dug and the posts embedded in concrete.

My favorite work was Saturday. Three concrete blocks were chiseled out of the driveway curb, and irrigation water lines and landscape electricity lines re-routed to make way. Digging two trenches resulted in relocated sprinklers for the oleander and a new, strategically located garden faucet -- my seventh.


Then two blocks were set facing inwards, paving bricks laid, a step to nowhere created, stucco repaired and painted, and some decorative Mexican tiles glued. I'm beginning to like Liquid Nails a lot.


The gates still go nowhere because we have to finish stringing the aviary wire. Although the gate frames seal well, there's nothing to keep javelins and varmints from feasting on the salad buffet.

Soon enough, the wire will be stretched, stapled and nailed, another two-foot wire stretched along the ground as an apron, then covered with dirt, and the gates will be finished.

Meanwhile, one Texas purple sage bush went bonkers from watering. It's amazing how much desert plants thrive on weekly watering. Plastic PVC pipes trenched and buried all over the place give me seven garden faucets from which yours truly enjoys hand watering each weekend. I need one more, down in Coat Hanger Valley.

The New Garden: Gates to Nowhere

This past weekend, we set up three gates to nowhere around the new garden and embedded enough posts in one-foot concrete-filled holes to create the perimeter.

The gate on the left is on the northeast. There's one on the southeast and a third on the northwest. It makes a little more sense when you walk the property, which is easy to do now because aside from the three gates, there is no barrier.

Two yards of dirt were delivered on Tuesday. All three raised beds are loaded up and ends closed. Shari has tomatoes, scarlet runner beans, and Thai basil planted in one bed.

We have enough dirt and space left over for two more smaller beds -- but that's in the improbable future. Still, it's nice to have space to expand.

Soon, probably this coming weekend, we will stretch and staple the aviary wire and the ongoing struggle to exclude javelinas, rabbits and any other varmint we possibly can will open its first chapter.

The New Garden

Happy May Day! 

Spring means desert blooms in the Old Pueblo. Palo verde trees have been blooming in the basin for a week or more, and trees in the Foothills are only a week behind. One quickly notices which trees have been getting enough water.

Saguaro cactus are budding and we have our first full blown flower in our yard. Prickly pear, acacia and mesquite are in flower, agave shoots are attracting bees and humming birds, and the hanging cactus is still blooming.

The new garden is waiting for topsoil. Sifting the existing dirt is only a start.  There's not much organic material in it. I'm thinking of collecting horse manure from the trail in the wash.

Shari already has planted a couple of tomatoes (plants, not the red things). She has scarlet runner beans growing in pots and they are past ready for the big time, but we need good dirt.

The news is that the three raised beds are pretty much done -- but for dirt. Once that's wheel-barrowed inside the beds, I'll close off the remaining ends. Last Friday I prepared the base and laid the first course of concrete blocks. Then took a nap. 

Does everyone know what caliche is? It's hardpan. Thick layers of caliche is why we are located on a hill overlooking the lower elevation in the Tucson basin. It takes a pickaxe to break it up to dig out level ditches in which to lay the concrete blocks.

Saturday I bought the remaining blocks and the caps for all three beds, and presto. Quicker than you can count the number of empty tubes of Liquid Nails in the garbage can, it's cocktail hour, I'm bushed, and it's time to marvel at my accomplishment and take pictures.

They look like remnant foundations from some ancient civilization.

I'm working up the energy and inspiration to put up the perimeter fence. Shari came up with the idea of posts bolted onto concrete piers and embedded in concrete for gates and corners. Friends have used aviary wire (finer and prettier than chicken wire), so we'll stretch that between the posts, then lay some more wire on the ground around the fence so little critters can't tunnel underneath.

At least, that's the plan for now. Seems easier than digging a one-foot deep trench for about 150 feet, much of it through caliche.

Then we need new PVC pipes and three faucets, landscape fabric and wood chips to keep the dust down, about three gates, and shade cloth.

No rest for the wicked. If only I didn't have to work for a living. 

The New Garden

Looking east towards the San Simeon circle.
The first row of the first bed is laid out.

We are lucky to have our house and backyard crowded into the north corner of our diamond-shaped acre. That leaves most of our rough acre to the south: the gully that's Coat Hanger Valley and a flat area that's by San Simeon circle. It's in that flat area — as you drive in from San Simeon, to the left of the driveway before it drops into the gully — where we are creating the new garden.

Narrow, tan-colored concrete blocks will frame not one, not two, but three raised garden beds.

We found a great place to buy the blocks. Each one weighs over thirty pounds. Each raised garden will have two rows of blocks adding up to sixty blocks. That's about 1,800 pounds, not counting the caps.

Looking west towards our house.

The delivery charge is too much. Plus I really had no idea how it would all fit together: full blocks, end blocks, end half blocks, male and female ends, and corners. So to keep our trusty Smoke Ganesha (a/k/a Ford Explorer) from collapsing from the weight, we've made three trips to the brickyard to collect enough blocks for two beds. Two or three more trips should do it for the third bed and the caps.

We haven't completely figured out dirt, yet. This area used to be a garden some time in the past. There's fine, dark dirt and buried, cast iron irrigation lines. Plus, we saved a pile of dirt from the old garden that used to be in the backyard. But we will need to buy some topsoil, I'm sure.

Conceptual sketch of the
completed new garden.

This town is full of stories about buying topsoil that's so hot, it kills seedlings. So Shari is studying different sources, and eying the bountiful gardens by the Montessori school down the hill with its beds of overflowing greens and piles of rich dirt. So, where did they get that dirt?

We also haven't figured out the fencing, something to keep out javelinas and rabbits and discourage casual critter passers-by, at least temporarily. Lizards, ground squirrels and chipmunks can climb over anything.

Then there are birds to worry about, shade cloths to set up, gates to build, and more driveway curbs to cut for access. A work bench and a tool rack would be nice, and water lines are mandatory.