I love waking up in the morning and looking out my window. Outside my window is my vegetable garden. Growing, flourishing, producing, living. This is my first garden as a grownup, and I’m attempting to grow it in Los Angeles. I’m not the only one either. If you take a walk down my street you see grape arbors and mini orchards and a few houses that have ripped up their entire front yards to grow vegetables and fruits of all kinds.
Growing up in the Northwest for me meant every spring we planted a garden and every fall we tried to find and dig up all of last years potatoes, which never happened. Now, as an adult trying to re-capture the essence of my semi-rural upbringing, I have taken a small plot of land and stuck my flag in it, claiming a bit of serenity and simplicity, attempting to sidetrack the disdain I sometimes harbor for living in the hustle and bustle of city life.
As the little plants grow up and start blooming and the little veggies start appearing, I’m just so proud of them. Like they fought the odds and won. I tend take anything even slightly tangible and translate it to my own life, and so my little garden has become a reflection of my own ability to survive and grow. Not that if they die then I too shall wither, that would be dramatic.
Not only am I happy to have a little place of Zen in my yard, I am happy to add to my local Farmers Market produce my own home-grown tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, peppers, garlic and herbs, snap peas, string beans, spinach and lettuce and soon strawberries and whatever else I fancy to grow, answering the question of “what should we have for dinner” with a handful of freshly harvested food. Knowing that I’m doing the best I can to live responsibly, both economically and environmentally, is a most fulfilling thing.
Sustainable living has become a popular thought, Prius’ and organic food and hemp clothing being a few of the commercial responses to the idea. Attempting to go beyond pop culture and maybe a bit more extreme than many city dwellers, I’ve made my own granola, hugged a tree and gotten out my thread and needle to do my best to live in a way that my First Nation ancestors would be proud of.
If being human means that I take from the earth to live, I’m going to do it, but I’m going to try to eek out every drop I can from every moment and every item I’m given. And I’m really enjoying the challenge.
