"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams..." - A. O'Shaughnessy / W. Wonka

Growing up in LA you understand early on that there's a very real "give and take" between you, the Angeleno, and the universe. Somewhere along the way we traded Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall for Earthquakes, Fires, Floods and Riots. The sidewalks in Hollywood are vile and occupied with a familiar array of pro bono costumed adults. These sidewalks are literally paved to sparkle, but we can barely see the stars at night. And while we can fake almost anything in this town, we insist on putting a premium on being real. Why does anyone want to live here? It makes no sense. It's Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory without the novelty or sweetness. Here I am surrounded by a sea of people searching for golden tickets, orange Oompa Loompas parading as starlets and there isn't a single chocolate waterfall in sight. Where is the silver lining, friends?

All this said yet this is my hometown and I ache for it's smoggy embrace when I'm away. Under it's unnaturally thick layer of vehicular emissions and industrial fumes this city is teeming with diversity, hope and a December sun so glorious that I want to hold it, put it in my pocket and save it for the less beautiful days and moments ahead that will inevitably crush me. This year, LA has been not only my home, but also the home to my very first garden.

2012 will be upon us in a few hours and I can say with some certainty now that the blog garden has been a metaphor for this Urban Farm Girl's life. It's been a bit of nature in my world of plastic, something real amongst all the fake, something that "gives" in a world of "take". Ok, let's be real. It's been a welcome distraction and an exercise in overcoming that childhood obstacle of finishing what I start.


I'm ready to kick off the new year with my winter crops. Where we once housed some runaway volunteer tomato plants I have planted what I hope will yield broccoli and cauliflower. It's possible that the cauliflower plant is really a cabbage plant but it's too early for me to tell...

Skirt: American Apparel
Sweater: Banana Republic
Boots: Madewell
Purse: "New" because my previous one was stolen three weeks ago during a night out to see music with the Hero Boyfriend and his multi hyphenate drummer-surfer-actor-pharmacist friend... Schuler & Sons. The purse is from Anthropologie.

*Everything can be found on sale. Of course, you are reading this with irony...










Summer 2011 Volunteer Tomato Plants. These showed up out of nowhere and were a pleasant surprise but like 2011, they had to go... This space is now home to the above mentioned and pictured winter crops.












Here's to a new year filled with joy, celebration, courage, grace and fruitful harvests. Below are some 2011 blog garden events and before & after pictures that didn't make it into this year's blog posts. Happy New Year. Cheers!

Valentine's Day - The Hero Boyfriend gets me started with an herb garden. Nothing says "LOVE" like Mint and Thai Basil

Before & After - The first sidewalk lettuce crop

The evolution of my tomato plants. I eventually made homemade red sauce with our tomatoes.

There goes the neighborhood...

Confessions of a closeted nerd:
I try to keep it under wraps, but those who know me see right through the platform stiletto, vintage hero boyfriend shirt wearing, get made up to look like you just got out of bed, don't look like you're trying, boho fashion plate that I so clearly am... Move over Mary Kate Olsen, I've got the unflattering, ill-fitting, rarely matching corner of fashion usurped.

But really, I'm the girl that a couple years ago asked for a dictionary for my birthday. Also, if I were stranded on a deserted island and could magically receive only one periodical it would be the Economist. I miss the Dewey Decimal System. I think reading is magic.

Enter Urban Farm Girl wearing one of her favorite hats, the Policy Wonk hat...

NIMBY...If you're a part-time policy wonk like myself it's likely that you have heard this term. Politicos like to throw it around like it's some kind of bad word, but rest assured it's not as bad as "gerrymandering." It's suppose to simultaneously spook you and threaten you. Definitely it's suppose to incite something in you. NIMBY...Not In My Backyard.

Example - Public Transit:
"Then the westside residents got all NIMBY about it and blocked the subway from running up Wilshire to the beach."
NIMBY Origin 1980-85. Related forms: Nimbyism; noun

It's elitist, pretentious and I just don't like it. On most days the way I feel about NIMBY is how I imagine Kim Kardashian feels about privacy. I'm against the very principle of it. It's bad, does nothing for anyone and I want none of it in my life. BUT then Manduca quinquemaculata caterpiller finds it's way back and all I can think is NIMBY!!! That's right, there goes the neighborhood.

The charming, domestic partnership living, Italian/American neighbors were in their front yard gardening the other weekend and guess what was making itself at home in their defoliating tomato plant???




That's right, this guy... GO AWAY!!!
Please. Please go away.















It was a beautiful tomato plant home for this guy while it lasted. Check out the neighbor's heirloom tomatoes! Garden envy...

















Again, circle of life. Once more, Cranberry gets the prize.











Urban Farm Girl - "I cannot deal with another one of those piece of sh*t worms for one more second."

Shirt: Bergamot Station Gift Shop
Shorts: Old Navy
*At this point, you should be reading this with irony






The day wasn't all scare tactics and squirm, there was plenty of gardening involved. I planted the lettuce seeds we harvested along with some herbs.






Seeds that we harvested from left to right:
lettuce mix (red leaf, romaine, butter lettuce/Boston bibb), coriander/cilantro, arugula








So it's definitely not all doom and gloom. Winter will be upon us soon and our winter crops have already begun to peek through the soil. The real question at this point is...will we have enough eggs to get us through to spring? That worrisome tale is for the next blog post.

Things that make me go "ewww"

Look, I don't scare easy. I take the train downtown at night alone, and not to the gentrified tourist trap by the Staples Center, but to Spring Street by the court house and police headquarters. I walk fast, but not scared. I make enough eye contact with questionable characters to say, "I see you", but not so much so they think I'm saying, "I can take you." I turn my iPod down, low enough so I can hear my surroundings but I keep them on so I don't invite random solicitations for bootleg cigarettes, hats or good old fashion cash money. As Halloween is fast approaching I thought I would write about things which bring on fright. For me, this includes things which slither, rodents of any size (except the barrel shaped 90 lb. Capybara which I think is kind of adorable) and anything that would qualify as a "critter." Now I know many of these "critters" are good for the garden. I accept this and am eager to protect ecosystems and the general circle of life. But then I find these "critters" and all intellectual thoughts and theories give way to irrational fears...

Meet Manduca quinquemaculata caterpiller, also known as a tomato hornworm. This guy, and his ilk, can be found throughout the United States, northwestern Mexico and southern Canada. Apparently, they're often found clinging onto defoliated tomato plants, which is exactly what this worm was doing.


We were working on changing over the crops this weekend and as the hero boyfriend was pulling out the long gone tomato plants I noticed that nasty green guy on my bell pepper plant. In a surprisingly calm voice I asked the hero boyfriend to take a look at this giant caterpillar I found. He was delighted, I was horrified. The hero boyfriend wanted to give the giant worm to the chickens, you know, circle of life stuff. Cool. But there was no f***ing way I was going to touch it.









Cranberry, the littlest chicken of them all, took the "prize." It was like watching some kind of animal kingdom Coliseum, ancient Roman, crazy making. I wanted to run, but I couldn't look away...










In other chicken/worm news, the hero boyfriend took out the meal worms on this same glorious day. I don't involve myself in this process. In fact, I want nothing to do with this process. And really, this is usually when I pull the URBAN farm girl card.

Note: These are clearly not Urban Farm Girl hands









In less gross but also in the vein of odd/Halloween things, is this. One of the very last tomatoes picked from the past season's plants was this conjoined mutant tomato. Yes, all this on the same adventurous day in the garden...lucky Urban Farm Girl.







In happier/prettier news, I am pleased to introduce this fall season's pepper collection! Meet Habanero, Serrano, Jalapeño and Bell.

I'm Just a Girl - G. Stefani

Riddle:
Sometimes I want more of it, other times I complain there's too much of it. Sometimes I seek it, sometimes I look to fill it. Often, it's hard for me to share it. What is it? It's SPACE.

I'm a 21st century Urban Farm Girl, a modern Milly, an "I work hard for my money, I can buy my own drinks" girl. That being said, I'm clearly not opposed to someone getting me a drink as I have asked the hero boyfriend countless times to get me a glass of water when he's already half asleep in bed. As I constantly spew out diametrically opposed requests and make bizarre rules like "That 11.1 oz carton of coconut water isn't suppose to go down in one gulp," I have realized that I am all girl. Somewhere my inner feminist is being lectured by a couple of Gloria's. <--Steinem and Allred, I hear you and you have valid points.

Like hurricanes, girls will go by different names (hurricanes are also known as tropical cyclones), and can create that slippery slope effect in arguments (did you know, a hurricane can spawn that other natural phenomenon we call a tornado?) Gentlemen, remember this as your partner starts arguing things you didn't even know were up for grabs. Yes, hurricanes carry "heat energy" (whatever the hell that is) and I've been known to throw around some heat. But they also help to maintain equilibrium in the Earth's troposhpere. What am I saying? My hurricane tendencies offer the promise of balance. I'm a volatile act of nature and sometimes I am chaos and other times I succumb to it. This means that my idea and definition of space changes. I'm sorry. It's not cool, but it's real. Again, hero boyfriend, thank you for your endless patience. Thankfully, growing and nurturing a garden is a bit more black and white.

As you may know, the carrots were a gardening disaster. Upon further review, the hero boyfriend and I believe that I didn't give the seeds enough space to grow so they weren't able to reach their fullest potential. They were fighting it out so instead of having some excellent carrots we ended up with a bounty of beastly ones. Yes, the metaphor is now complete. This time for our most recent harvest, I carefully dropped seeds into pockets that were evenly spaced apart from one another. This is a much more measured strategy than the "throw a handful of seeds into the air and see where they land" one I implemented this spring. We'll see what happens but it feels pretty promising.

Below are some photo updates!





A life of miniatures...













Miniatures are real, too. The eggs are from our chickens and with a little Urban Farm Girl elbow grease this turned into a tasty egg scramble for two.













These tomatoes, once "vine ripened" could audition for Whole Foods.












Home of the next carrot crop













The newest lettuce patch

One Mile/Harvest at a Time

It's not your imagination, I really have been a bit neglectful of the blog garden lately. In an attempt to justify this (and let's collectively be glad that I don't currently have children or pets) my mind and energy have been focused on other things.

Flashback:
As a young Urban Farm Girl I spent much of my time in the gym. You know those girls you see cartwheeling around on front lawns and on the school yard? I was one of them. Anything that was close to being four inches wide I made into a balance beam. To this day I have broken ceiling fans (because who doesn't vault off of their parents' bed) but no bones. Sometime around the very beginning of high school I traded in my chalky hands for sneakers.

Present Day:
I have been known to do things on a whim, to turn a coincidence into a "sign." After coordinating with former college roommates to meet up in San Francisco (a city where none of us reside) I saw that the San Francisco half marathon was also taking place. I immediately thought, "No way! The same weekend?!?! This must be a sign. I should definitely sign up for it."
So I did. <--Who does that???

With little training, except for some after work jogs and a 10K two weeks before the race, I showed up yesterday to run my 13.1 miles. Here's what I already know about myself, I have the love of sport in me. Maybe it's the athlete inside that comes up for air every now and then (although it's buried pretty deep these days) or those Kaiser commercials that have brainwashed/convinced me to "Thrive," but either way I found my runners high somewhere between miles six and eight. By Mile 10 the sharp pain that had been searing through my legs disappeared and I thought to myself "Oh my God, I can't feel my hamstrings anymore."

Then, the people. The people, around every corner all along Haight Street, including that storied intersection where it meets Ashbury, with their home made signs "Keep Running!!!!", "You're Run-derful", "One Mile at a Time." There was that middle age man shouting, "Stay positive. This is what makes you better than the spectators!" He, of course, was himself a spectator. And that's what is so wonderful about Sport. Because they're cheering as hard as you're running and for all those miles we're on the same team, Team: Good, Team: Be Better, Team: Do something new, something you might fail at and go boldly. <--Congress, take note.

What does any of this have to do with gardening? Well, I fail a lot at it. My bell peppers never grew to more than three inches and were completely inedible and my second bok choy crop never materialized at all. But here's what my 13.1 mile journey did for me, besides restore some of my faith in humanity, it reminded me that it's fine to limp along (hello, precious moments trapped in Murphy's Law hell), but make sure to run across the finish line. It's like they say, and by "they" I mean the universal sports enthusiasts, finish strong. So clearly my garden is limping along right now, but I'm not done. That unconditionally supportive hero boyfriend might even say that I'm just beginning.

Lastly, go ahead and sign up to walk that 5K, run that 10K or go for that big, bad triathlon. Like the SF Marathon runner shirts this year read it's "worth the hurt." Also, I want to cheer for you.

You'll find that I've documented my gardening failures with the sad pictures below. Please note, the beastly carrots hurt the most.

You see that carrot, right? Fourth from the right? I don't even know...

The cherry tomatoes, which are doing quite well, are in the picture to put the bell pepper's petite-ness in perspective.

This was not edible.

A Love Like Coriander

I have a tendency of making things more complicated than necessary. I do this horribly annoying thing that (understandably and without fail) makes the hero boyfriend crazy. I continue making the case for my "side" once he already concedes to whatever action/decision I've passionately argued for. If you don't know what this looks like I'll give you a quick glimpse...

Hero Boyfriend (HB): Do you want to do fish tacos for dinner tonight?
Urban Farm Girl (UFG): How about we make pizzas at home?
HB: Yeah, ok. Pizza sounds great, I'll pick up some vegetables and tomato sauce.
UFG: Yeah, because I figured we're having fish tacos on Friday with our beautiful Canadian friends and we might be all fish taco'ed out if we have them tonight, too.
HB: Yep. Do you want bell peppers and the honey wheat dough?
UFG: Yeah, thanks! Also, you know, I have that new chopper that I want to test out. I can use it to chop up all the pizza toppings and see if it's really as good as it looks on TV.

...can't. let. go.

So I can make things needlessly complicated much like prunes, typhoons, and cilantro. What do the above mentioned fruit, meteorological spectacle and herb have in common? They remain the same even when called by a different name.

This weekend the hero boyfriend brought down those two big trash bags that had been tied up high on a tree for weeks. Inside, were the beginnings of our next cilantro crop. BUT, also inside those bags was coriander. Coriander! What?!?! They're both inside the big trash bags?!?! I could not wrap my Urban Farm Girl mind around this. So, upon further research, I've learned that cilantro is really coriander leaves and Chinese parsley (which is different than flat leaf parsley.) Also, it is super annoying because it's like fish, the singular and plural spellings are the same. Please be more botanologically and grammatically complicated.

The process (for me) looks like this:
1. Cilantro grows it's delicate, citrus-y green leaves
2. The plant flowers, then dries out
3. The dried plants go into trash bags and hang on a tree where they continue drying
4. The dried plants then go into a large bin where I smash them (a la Lucy & Ethel) to break off the pods/seeds
5. Plant the pods for more cilantro or break open the pods and enjoy the coriander

Lastly, it is the hero boyfriend's endless patience along with his kind and encouraging words that often pick this Urban Farm Girl up after a failed bok choy crop and pulling up beastly/disfigured carrots. (The next blog post will explore these two moments of gardening defeat.) They say that variety is the spice of life and though more complicated than initially thought (or bargained for), I give back in different ways. Here's hoping I'm the coriander in his life!

Below are pictures of my first rendezvous with coriander.








Cilantro

This is cilantro once it goes to seed















Up you go cilantro seeds















Almost there...













Enter Urban Farm Girl. Stomp, stomp, stomp.

Dress: J.Crew (if you like this dress, don't even bother looking for it, it's at least five years old...er, vintage)
Hat: Style - Cowboy, Folsom Pro Rodeo 2011

*Always read with irony
















Cilantro seeds/Coriander

With a bok bok here and a bok bok there..

Here a bok, there a bok... Ok, you know what, why don't you go bok yourself? This is the first time the hero boyfriend will hear about my unhappiness with our bok choy. I know, it's not fair to blame my crankiness on the bok choy, it's not the vegetable's fault. Like most things, I am projecting. But, what the bok?!?! I sow, nurture, weed, water and even praise the leafy greens (yes, I proclaim their greatness out loud and tell them what a good job they're doing.) So you can imagine the crushing disappointment I felt after I harvested my very first crop and prepared it for dinner to have it all fit in one bowl. This was suppose to be a special moment for me, like a dance recital or spelling bee. No, I hadn't been practicing for months, but I had certainly been preparing for months and there was potential for interpretive dance. Mark this as my first official blog garden complaint.

I was going to do it right. I had the white porcelain bowl out, you know, so I could show off the rich greens in the bok choy and it seemed kind of high brow (something I imagined Gwyneth Paltrow would tell me to do. No, I don't think she would stop at telling me what to eat, I count on her to tell me what to eat it in, too.) And by the time I'm done typing this blog post an island nation will have been able to eat 7,000 acres of bok choy. I know, that statement makes no sense...Neither does growing bok choy. Here's my advice, buy it.

Ok, it's not all bad. It did make enough for dinner and two lunches the next day and it did taste like all kinds of healthy. Since I didn't get around to writing this blog before the hero boyfriend went to Home Depot I now have at least one other bok choy harvest coming my way. He picked up more bok choy seeds which I have already planted and have begun to sprout. The blog garden comes full circle in the pictures below, enjoy!

Bok Choy beginning to flower












Urban Farm Girl


Bikini: Mara Hoffman
Yoga Pants: Victoria's Secret
Flip-flops: Crew Cuts by J.Crew (yes, I wear kids clothing. You should see me at Target. Kid meet Candy Store.)

*Again, please read with irony




Bok Choy on its way to becoming dinner
























Clean and prepared, almost ready for dinner













Bok Choy all over again...




("Asian Vegetables" = Bok Choy)

From Seed to Table

(Mom, Santa Monica beach 1970-something)

The first thing I recall planting are tulips with my mom in the front yard when I was 7 or 8. What I can't remember is whether or not they ever grew... My mom was the city girl to my dad's little bit of country. He has a remarkable green thumb (he manages to grow organic starfruit in California), which I not so secretly hope I've inherited, while my mom's gardening adventures once led to the emergency room. BUT on Mother's Day I remind her of only her strongest qualities.

Before the hero boyfriend and I made the Saccharin-y Hallmark holiday pilgrimage to see my 365 days a year wonderful mom, I reluctantly made my first attempt to harvest arugula seeds. After a minor concussion, late night soccer game and baking up two batches of homemade brownies just a dozen hours earlier I was feeling like a cranky (though not hostile) martyr. Since the world needs another martyr the same way it needs more particulate matter in the air I had no choice but to say, "Suck it up Urban Farm Girl."

Arugula. The President likes it. Who doesn't love the vitamin C and potassium laced peppery tasting leafy green? (I'm not sure about the statement regarding the President, it's just a vague campaign trail memory at this point, kind of like universal health care.) Arugula seeds come from arugula seed pods which grow from the arugula plant. So basically what I don't eat goes to seed and I'm guilted into efficiency. I mean, it's a recession (I don't care what you say National Bureau of Economic Research, it's still a recession) and I can't allow the next arugula harvest to go to waste because I'm desperate to go to the beach, surf and have a rum drink, right? RIGHT? Waste not, want not. Below, you'll find the abridged process in pictures. Being the lucky Urban Farm Girl that I am I have amazing help from the endlessly patient hero boyfriend and the chickens...even Kevin.

Lastly, my mom said, unprompted, at lunch today that she loves my arugula and continued to criticize iceberg lettuce for its lack of nutrients. She's been doing this my whole life, supporting my interests by educating herself on whatever silly, quasi-viable adventure I was embarking on. For almost 30 years she has encouraged me to fight for the things I believe in and chase the things I can't live without. I feel the most beautiful when I catch a glimpse of her in me. Thank you, mom, for bringing this seed to the table (without being a cranky martyr.) I'll be paying it forward my whole life. I love you.

Harvesting Arugula:


Sidewalk Garden Update:




Bok Choy









Mixed Greens










Red Onions









Tomatoes