Springtime for me....

 Not this sunflower

Today I wrestled to the ground a 15 foot sunflower with probably about 20 flowers on it.  Not this one.  It was the last of one of four or five volunteers that grew over the winter and, because it wasn't an heirloom, surprised me with the abundance of blooms.  Its ancestor had only one.  But, it was leaning and the blooms were dying.  These volunteers had been - at one point - the only thing that seemed to flourish over the Fall and Winter.  I wasn't sure if they were mocking me about summers of love gone by or offering me hope for summers of love someday to come.

 Not these carrots

And I picked some carrots.  Not these.  A few straggles that managed to grow over the winter.  Random seeds that took root wherever they were washed to or dropped by birds to...  There were less than this bounty from last year, but in fact they are sweeter.  Much, much sweeter.  They weren't grown in rows like these, they took root where they decided to take root,  but rewarded me for their stubborness and defiance with the sweetest carrots I've grown yet.  

I'm sorry these photographs are from last year.  I haven't taken my camera much with me to the garden.  Through the Fall and Winter I had such mixed feelings about the garden and didn't feel like documenting anything.  And this Spring has been filled with travel (Boston, Arizona, and soon Portland) and company (if you haven't come, do) and events (I got a pretty medal today for riding 31 miles for the Miller Children's Hospital) and dinner parties (the 45 year old wine had turned for anyone following along) and photo shoots (look for some cool pictures of my friend Adriana in VegNews Magazine soon) and zombies (just plain long story).  So, lately I always seem to need to GO there rather than just BE there.  I'm always behind on watering or planting....  The Summer, I hope, will be just for me, the Garden, my camera, and my adrenals to simply chill. 

In the meantime, today I stood back and realized that maybe my failures of the Fall and Winter are giving way to some successes this Spring.  Stay tuned.....

Long Beach Is My Garden

This morning, in order to follow through on "believing the impossible" of yesterday's post and to earn the silver medallion my friends Anne and Kirk gave me as a result of said post, I got up early and rode my bike along the LA River to a SoCal Guerrilla Gardening spot under the Anaheim Bridge.  Scott Bunnell who IS SoCal Guerrilla Gardening arranges legal and illegal plantings ala Raves in abandoned bits of dirt all over Long Beach.   So, along with 15 or so folks and a film crew (figures he would be getting filmed for a travel show this particular day), we took his lovingly propagated natives and turned this into that:

As one of the volunteers, George, said:  "I live in an apartment and don't have a garden, so why not do this.  Then Long Beach is my garden".  I just loved that!  The volunteers were old and young, gardeners and not, apartment dwellers and house dwellers and veterans to SoCal Guerrilla along with total newbies like me.

I think one of the unexpected gifts of my garden has been the circle of fellowship around gardening and greening.  I've got a web of cyber-blog people I rely on for advice and encouragement and some have even become friends in the flesh like Adriana of Anarchy In The Garden.  I did what I do best and had pimped her to the film crew before she even got there... She gives good interview. 

Today's guerrilla planting was another step in my adventures in gardening.  It reaffirmed for me that I can and will find community because of my garden.  Scott gave aloe vera to anyone who wanted some.  And as I set out for the bicycle path again, I passed this scooter and smiled at the adventure this particular plant was about to go on: