Dream Gardens

How fun to see and hear the first group's interpretation and manifestation of what a dream garden is to them.  You could see that a lot of heart and hard work went into each presentation and clearly we have all learned some important lessons by taking the class.  A couple of messages really stood out to me: gratitude vs. abundance (Elizabeth); do it anyway (Liza); remember edges and borders (Coleman/Janet); think big (Dion); work with what you have (Jenny); sometimes you have to throw your plans out the window (Rob); make it a community effort (Mark/Will). The messages/reminders that I hoped to communicate in my presentation were: know where you are, dreams can evolve.

Although this was the first of two classes more about what we've learned rather than about "instruction,"  there were certainly a couple of nuggets of information that I took home from Steve and Wendy: alfalfa is not a one season cover crop (deep roots); artichokes need to be divided every couple of years, and true Green Globes are best; apples are biennial; and, most importantly, my two new Santa Rosa Plums will not fruit unless I can bring in at lease a branch of another American (not European) plum like a Burbank.

We also talked about some good salvage resources: Heritage Salvage in Petaluma (www.heritagesalvage.com), Ohmega Salvage in Berkeley (www.ohmegasalvage.com), Building Resource in San Francisco (www.buildingresources.org).

Some of us prolonged our second to last class, staying on for some "extra credit" work time planting zucchini, potatoes, peppers, scallions, basil and more lettuce, chard and bok choi.  You'd think we had no room left, but Steve remedied that by having us dig up many rows of our cover crops including quinoa and amaranth.  Oh well, easy come, easy go- see how unattached we've learned to be!