Wildlife in Los Angeles

So now that our garden is hospitable to plants, it has become a sort of heaven for wildlife and other undesirables.

Meet the ducks.

First of all, they are super dumb. They mate for life but one of the male ducks that visits our pool did not get the memo. He has been a third wheel for the last few months and it's hard to watch. He follows the female everywhere and the other male keeps giving him a whooping.

My family argues that I am not sure it's always the same male getting whooped. I don't know. It's a bit of a sad Ménage a Quack.

Second, they can't tell the difference between themselves and their reflection. That or they are vain. They spent so much time admiring their reflection that I call them the Quack-dashians.

Ducks unable to tell shit from shainola. Below, the irresistible duck-fatale.

Thirdly, the poop in the pool and I don't know about you but I find that rude.

But you know what's NOT rude?  This! Awww ....

Other forms of wild life. 

Worms hard at work in the garden.

Dragonflies have begun appearing every so often. They never used to.

The cat, Dusty:  I put him under the category of wild life because if you even remotely try to pet him when he is not in the mood he turns feral on you.

Dusty acts mostly indifferent to the garden. But if he truly did not care, would he be rushing out the moment we are gardening?  I think he secretly approves. He does love the wood chips. Loves to roll in them. And once he is nice and dirty, he loves to take a nice, leisurely tongue bath while lying on our bed, preferably the pillow side.

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Earth Worms: The Final Frontier

Earth Worms are amazing. We did not add them to the garden, they just arrived.  They were undoubtedly beamed up from another dimension/universe. Or else they found their way into our vegetable beds after waiting in the depth of the Earth for a thousand years, because we sure as hell never saw one back when we had a lawn.

This is what earth worms do: they are able to somehow gnaw on solid rock and convert that into plant-accessible trace minerals. They also eat everything that is gross, abject, rotted, stinky, and all around revolting and covert it into nutrient rich worm poop aka worm gold.

It is my very scientific observation that they do all this despite zero eyesight and little brains to speak of. Only a mouth, a butt hole and very little in between.



We don't use pesticide or fertilizer. Only worm casting and worm tea. Some time, I'll explain more. If anyone is interested, leave a question in the comments section.

July Is Fruity

This is our best year so far for plums and grapes. We've had tons of rain this year and perhaps this rain is why the growth has been spectacular.  When I was growing up in France, we waited for late summer and even fall for plums and grapes. Here we harvest as early as July.



We painstakingly wrapped each cluster in paper bags as soon as they began to ripen to protect them from birds, squirrels and dirt. It worked!

Until it didn't.

Some of the fruit did not mature evenly. Still delicious and it's nice to outsmart the squirrels for a change (or did they outsmart us? we asked ourselves, as we ate the --literally-- sour grapes.)




So many plums on some of the branches while the other branches remained bare. We think it was due to not enough bees. Next spring we are considering a hive.

Growing With Our Organic Garden

Everyday I am flabbergasted by the beauty of or small permaculture garden. And to think that for 10 long years all we had was an ugly, water-wasting, lawn! It's been only a year since we created our beds, installed our drip system, and planted everything we could lay our hands on. There is no turning back to the old us. We love our garden and we love gardening too much. My husband and I talk about our garden as though it were one of our children. We rejoice in it. We take photographs of it. We share its bounty with our children, our friends and our neighbors.



We nurture the vegetable garden and it nurture us, not just by feeding us organic fruit, herbs, and vegetables, but it keeps us fit and delights our senses. It connects us with nature, with outside, with the soil and the bugs, with ourselves.




We have learned to live with the seasons. (Yes, there are seasons in Los Angeles. Kind of.) There are times for planting, times for harvesting, and times for returning plants to the cycle through composting.



Nothing is wasted in the garden or the kitchen.  We wash our vegetables outside as we water, or over a large pitcher, so that the excess water is immediately returned to the garden. Food waste is down to nothing. Juicing pulp and peel go to the compost or the worm bin. It's the cycle of life and we are now part of it rather than in the way of it.



Critters big and small come to the garden and we have learned to accommodate each other.



Organic gardening also heals us. So much on this planet is messed up and cruel. There is only kindness in our garden. No rash tilling, no chemicals, no additives. Things grow and we watch them do that. The garden calms us, soothes us, and shows us what to do for ourselves and for the planet.