Making Garden Beds in the Forest

Everything is overgrown and lush around our home in this stunning Mendocino Forest. Shamrock green is so bright, its luminescence enlivens my soul after months of white winter. It takes me a while to locate my plant allies among the weeds in our garden beds – like finding treasured Easter eggs.

Today, Joey and I spent our time on the garden in front of our home in the hollows. The sun beat over our heads at a whopping 72 degrees, which is the hottest temperature I have felt in months. It was glorious to work up a sweat. As we get closer to summer, the arc that the sun travels is much higher in the sky, gliding a few hands width above the canopy of redwoods, firs, and oaks. Now is the time to plant as much as possible.

I am literally living my dream. Ever since I was in my twenties, I have wanted to live in the woods with a strong man who knows how to live off grid. Now I’m in my mid-fifties and my back aches more than it would have if this dream had manifested thirty years ago, but it honestly doesn’t matter. This is an absolutely wondrous life. Plus, I’m only supplementing our food with the garden, I’m not trying to raise children on it, as if this wish materialized when I wanted it. The Goddesses and Gods really know what they are doing. Now, the garden is a leisure, an artform to carve out a place to grow food and herbs, working with what the land and water gives us.

When we bought the property there were six 10’ x 100’ hoop houses for growing cannabis on three flattened out spots: one at the top of the property, one halfway down and one spot near the trim house (where they trimmed and dried the cannabis) that originally was an 800 square foot shell that we have converted into the sweetest cottage. We have taken down five of the hoop houses and dumped all the soil in contained areas so the perlite doesn’t leach into the surrounding forest. The plan is to put a yurt at the top of the property that gets more sun and is closer to the Redwood Highway that takes us into the town of Willits; on the second flattened out spot I want to build a wood burning hot tub surrounded by flowers that we can add to the warm water.  This site overlooks ancient fruit trees (pear, apple, fig and olive) planted by homesteaders in the 1800s, that need tending, and 18,000 acres of protected forest.

The gardens that surround the house are for food and medicine. Currently there are two beds made from fallen trees that are 6’ x 10’ feet (one with garlic, strawberries, thyme and marigold and one with garlic, Johnny jump ups, watermelon, chamomile and oregano – the latter three having just been added) a 6’ x 30’ bed full of second year artichokes and pumpkins. The next two beds will be 6’ x 40’ and 6’ x 30’. Above the garden beds will be two rows of grapes, and on the hill facing the road we will plant all manner of berries that we expect will be abundant.

We have dumped the soil onto the earth, surrounded it with grow bags, weeded it, raked in, then planted a row of artichokes (Arty Chokey Farm will be Joey’s retirement business), watermelon, corn, and sunflowers. I’m creating a cozy spot shaded with a section of the last hoop house for happy hour and morning coffee – a she shed of sorts that looks down an old logging road flanked by madrone and redwood. At the end of the day, we can gaze out at our work from a large shaded porch lit by solar lights in the evening. A single solar panel charges a string of camp lights in the house, phones, speaker, and computers. Mind you, we have no cell reception or internet, so we cannot Google at a whim but we can watch downloaded movies and still play Solitaire.

A well at the top of the property reaches us through a series of hoses for a decent shower. Propane charges the refrigerator, stove and floor heater. At night we play cards, especially a game called Shitheads that my daughter Ali and hubby Braden taught us. We are surrounded by forest when we lay down to rest and usually sleep in until the glorious hour of 8am.

I love sleeping in the hollows. The drive from the highway turnout to our cottage is along a two-mile dirt road that descends 400 feet, with sharp cliffs on the right side that used to scare me. They could make you dizzy though so I don’t look if I’m the one driving. When we bought the house, I literally heard a blade of grass ask me to be the new caretakers of this land. It felt so scary to be so deep in the woods – not to mention that it’s an old pot property that Google shows has active hoop houses which could attract the bad guys. There’s even a hidey hole behind a secret panel where you could hide 4-6 people who could be quiet and not vomit from the fear or claustrophobia. Our converted bedroom has a fire door with a lock because this is where they dried twenty rows of cannabis ten feet tall by forty feet long. Those first nights Joey felt like sleeping in a vault, because that is what it had been. Then he put in two windows, and now we sleep deep.

I love the joy, peace and solitude I feel from living close to the land. Another one hundred feet from our cottage is the headwaters of Big River, lined by a redwood forest with mushrooms like black trumpets, witches’ caps, turkey tails and more to discover. I’ve watched a bear walk by from the kitchen window, seen many deer bounding over the meadows, we gobble to the wild turkeys who gobble back. I just found a discarded large rabbit pelt under the house when I was looking for a rake, most likely consumed by a mountain lion by virtue of how tidily the cat hid their food in a pile of grow bags. Quite honestly, I was totally freaked out at first, then I got over it when Joey explained that this happened months ago. We’re living in the wild and under this house is warm in winter, why wouldn’t an animal hang out here?

In this stillness and yet busyness of wildness, I feel the realness that I want to connect with. I don’t hear the pressures from people in my life or human society at large – there’s nothing to rank or be graded on as a good or bad job. It’s just what is. This acceptance is not based solely on the lack of a to do list, because I have freedom in my days wherever I am. But here, the silence forces me to hear the quiet of my soul. I cannot commit to a predetermined daily schedule and chose instead to stitch my financial life together by piecemeal gigs and windfalls. The rollercoaster feels immature sometimes. Other times, I have allowed this inconsistency to make me feel like a failure or worried for the future that isn’t here yet.

As the clean tree filled air blows, I see the silliness of my condemnations. I am rocking on a cushioned chair with a wool blanket over my legs, affectionally called the “Joey blanket” by the entire family because it was the first present from Joey gave me. Life is good in this moment and that is all we have.

Nature and Me

I believe I’ve struck a bargain with the birds. This is the second year they built a nest on top of the porch light. A bit of cardboard and the wood deck is saved from their excrement. That’s an easy compromise compared to abandoning the porch altogether when the chicks chirp their hunger with such frenetic energy that as I mother, I understand exactly that offspring is saying. My heart races and I scoot.

In the fall, I placed a Faeries Happen sign on the light, hoping to discourage the birds from building a nest because of the discomfort I figured we caused the birds. My plan worked through spring, until we arrived a few days ago. The baby birds were so tiny in their nest on Saturday. On Monday, we saw two chicks bursting either side of their home, and a couple days later, I notice there were three chicks in the nest. They are very quiet birds until they are hungry and then they are absolutely insistent. I mean, the energy is downright frenetic. Their parents swoop around the deck, but don’t dare deliver the food until we leave our beautiful shaded porch to play in the forest or go inside and close the door.

Sometimes Joey grumbles that I insist we abide the babies’ random schedule, but it’s familiar to me, and I feel sympathy for the parent birds. I also won’t allow him to weed whack the terrace where we building new garden beds and preparing for rows of grapes, until I have harvested the dandelion, which I clearly cannot do until all the bees have had their fill. But he’s the best at transporting seedlings into the earth. His tender, confident touch pulls in the dirt around their tender shoots, creates a well and then waters our plants deeply. We love living in harmony with nature.

While we gone, the rain and fog waters our herbal allies and food. It’s amazing, but the plants flourish, even during our long absences. Then they bloom in greeting when we arrive. The feeling of connection with my garden is transcendental. The rose geranium has become a bush from a sprig. The calendula opens for every single visit. Garlic stalks are over two feet. The artichokes are growing strong, safely protected by deer resistant flowers, chicken wire and flashing CDs. This week we transplanted two kinds of pumpkins and watermelon seedlings. Fingers crossed. We planted many starts too, including strawberries, thyme, basil, oregano, comfrey, and borage. Joey built another garden, fixed the road that got washed away this winter, mowed miles of road, and cleared the fallen trees.

I tend the garden and read many books preparing for a new career as a narrator and some clever videos to promote my next book, A Box of Magick. I’m careful about the hours that I am under the sun because it can be blistering, sweaty hot. The shower has questionable water pressure, more than a dribble, but nothing raucous. This is where I draw the line in homesteading.

So, while the birds fetch, deliver, and consume worms, I am inside with the walkie talkie while Joey goes to the wellhead at the top of the property two miles uphill – at an elevation gain of 400 feet. In order to water the cannabis plants, the previous owners laid ¾-inch pipe to fill water tanks next to three grow operations of thousands of potted cannabis plants.

Joey turns on the well to release water through pipes that run from the top of the property to the bottom, where the little house is located in the hollows. When the water in the water tank, about 100 yards from our house, overflows I alert him through the walkie talkie. It took half an hour to fill the tank and four minutes for it to travel from the top of the property to the bottom of the hollows.

The plan is to double the width of the pipe and set up a second water tank at the halfway point to the house to create more pressure because of gravity.

“We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”
― Aldo Leopold

The babies are quiet now. It’s time to go outside and sit on my lovely porch watching butterflies dance fly around golden poppies, bright yellow dandelions and calendulas blossoms that look like the sun itself. The afternoon breeze will rustle the bay leaves. And if the babies get hungry again, as they are wont to be, I will take a walk through the forest.

Within a few days, the biggest of two birds flew away without our notice. The smallest bird stayed in the nest for a full day. The mama bird chirped and called to her chick, but s/he didn’t want to go. I understand. Just wanted a little space, a moment to breath before launching yourself into thin air. Plus, this really is a cozy home in the hollows for generations of birds. Then, I looked up and the baby chick was gone. Time to fly.