Maybe Gary Snyder Was Right?

I got the idea to live this life from the great Enviro Poet: Gary Snyder. Gary (whose property he shared with Allen Ginsburg is some forty miles south of here) said that no one can garden in the Foothills. Undaunted, we set out to prove him wrong.

Our first garden has been mostly a failure. We didn't fence it much to our neighbor's dismay. They said the deer would eat the garden. In standard New Age Yuppie "WE LOVE THE WORLD" fashion, we Shamanistically held hands and asked the deer not to eat the garden. I reminded the deer not to eat the garden by peeing around the perimeter. Thus far the deer have left it alone.

But the garden didn't really grow. We got a few zucchinis and some tomatoes. We also got some Yukon Gold potatoes. The lettuce didn't ever grow. The carrots grew to be about an inch long. Bizarre!

Jazmine standing in front of our Lilliputian Sweet Corn.

And the weirdest thing is our sweet corn. These plants should be seven feet tall. Instead, they are two feet tall. And they have tasseled! Yes, ears are developing.

The ears will probably be like those ears of corn you see in Chinese cuisine.

We have been adding Alpaca poop to the garden (courtesy of some neighbors). We also will order better compost (besides making our own), worm tailings, chicken poop, Alpaca poop and topsoil for next year's garden.

Hopefully over the next few years we shall solve this problem. Add more beds. And be able to eat more out of our garden. For now, we just laugh at our efforts!!

It can be done, as our neighbors (an RN couple) have a beautiful garden. They said it took years to figure out how to do it.