We had another good rainstorm last weekend that helped all the newly planted trees, but it also made driving on the dirt impossible again.  Work has gone on almost daily, however.  Roger and his crew put in long, strenuous days, and Roger is a wealth of inspiration and resources (to remind you, he’s Roger Boddaert, Landscape Architect and the Tree Man of Fallbrook.)  With the rains came a little more erosion although the temporary covering of straw worked very well for retaining the topsoil.  The crew have been working on the embankment leading down to the streambed.  This is a photo of the area as it has been for many years.  The previous owner used whatever bits he could find to shore up the property: for recycling he gets a 10, but for beauty he gets a zero.

Using  a chain-link fence that I had extra, corrigated aluminum from the demolished sheds, and lots of hard labor, the area now looks like this:

The chain-link won’t ever rot, and will provide an excellent trellis for climbing plants which will help hold the soil.

Do you remember all that free broken concrete I mentioned awhile back?  The crew has turned it into two magnificent garden features:

This tiered walkway has turned an old RV parking spot that had enormous grass-covered gopher holes (made huge and dangerous by my dogs trying in vain to find those gophers) into a wonderful garden area.  It looks great from any angle, especially down from the ‘poop deck’, as I call the porch extension above.  Kumquats, passionvines, redbud and dwarf peach trees live here now. 

This retaining wall below my raised veggie beds sport a trellis for blackberries made from leftover wire and posts.  Still there is leftover cement for more projects.  What makes the above endeavors particularly sweet is that it is all about recycled and reused materials.  Keep your eyes out for free stuff: bags of clean leaves for compost, broken cement, old logs, etc., for your own garden.   Roger is particularly good at it.  In fact, today he and I both heard a chipper running in the neighborhood, and wondered what was being chipped.  He was far ahead of me, though, and arranged for the company to dump their truckload of palm chips this afternoon, and keep us in mind for more.  Its a bad season for Washingtonia palms in my neighborhood!  The chips are wet and fiberous, and will only be good for pathways.  Tomorrow the heap should be steaming!

Behind the palm mountain is still more broken cement and behind that mushroom compost: all were picked up for free! 

This week we are talking to pond guys, carpenters, greywater guys, rock guys and water guys.  The ponds are the next big project, and they have to be done right the first time.  Stay tuned!

During this kind of wet weather I’m rich in water.  The above photo is of the middle and lower part of the property as it runs over the edge of the barranca into the streambed below.  The palm trunks are left to provide support for a trellis, and the fallen trunks will be used to hold up swales, as furniture, stairs, and whatever else inspiration brings.  

Between showers the sun lit up the oaks that were planted just before the rains set in.  This double line of oaks will provide great habitat and should attract many more birds onto the property.  The natural clay soil was augmented with mushroom compost, urea from Fallbrook  Waste and Recycling, and innoculated with soil microbes.  Building up the life underground is key to health, disease-resistance, and water retention.  Microbes become attached to roots and not only allow the roots to absorb more water, but release the minerals in the soil so that they are available for the roots to slurp up.

Hello!  I’m endeavoring to update daily.  So much is going on!  My existing pond has been filled with Pacific Chorus Frogs doing their part in both maintaining their noisy reputation and continuing their gene pool.  Lots of spawn!  I can’t clean out the algae until they’ve hatched and metamorphed into frogs, otherwise the mosquito fish will get them. 

Anyway, the above photo is of the beginning nursery, where I’ve potted up many bareroot fruit trees and vines so that they are ready to plant.  Its at the end of bareroot season here in San Diego, although its the beginning of it elsewhere.  Pecans and almonds will be available in May. 

How exciting is this?  I’ve always envied the walkways where the trees grow together overhead, and voila!  I have one!  A Liquidamber Pathway.  Did you know that Liquidamber styraciflua, or Sweetgum, comes in a variety of Fall colors?  From dark red to lightest of yellow.  What a beautiful Autumn it will be! 

Tomorrow rain is predicted with heavy showers on Saturday and temperatures down to the low 20’s.  Here in Southern California that spells trouble for our citrus and avocado crops, and all our frost-tender ornamentals.  Perhaps on one of the rain days I’ll tell my very creepy waterlily story.  Waterlilys creepy?  Ohhhh yeahhhhh.

All that green looks gorgeous, but it is foxtail, Russian tumbleweed, and other invasive non-natives that produce seeds that harm not only my dogs, but any wild animals that get into them.  Foxtails ( Alopecurus ) were introduced into California by the Spaniards as graze for cattle, and quickly took over, and the pointy seeds hurt and kill many animals every year.  Mowing is not only time-consuming but polluting.  The Washingtonia palms grow like weeds and are-invasive in streambeds.  These were planted by the previous owner. (No, I don’t know what he was thinking.  He pulled out a lime grove to plant them.)  Since the fronds are so flammable, in this fire zone all dry fronds must be pruned off, which is expensive and painful (thorns!).  I am keeping a couple of these palms on the lower end of the property because orioles love to nest in them, and so do raccoons. The rest will be cut and used back into the design of the property.

Sheds that had been put up by the previous owner out of scrap pieces are slowly coming down on their own.  Since I don’t want to be inside when they do, the sheds must be taken down and replaced.  Everything that can be reused into the garden structure will be saved.  The raised veggie beds have been an ongoing project of mine for years; these are lined on the bottom with aviary wire to prevent little gopher friends from dining.

Jury-rigged retaining walls made out of scrap lumber, wire fencing and corrigated aluminum had been installed by the previous owner and held up for years.  Recycling:great.  Unsightly: yes.  Dangerous: ohhh yeahhh.  Some areas have been giving way during recent floods when the upper property funneled the neighborhood water down through this to the streambed below.  Non-native jade plant (Crassula ovata) grows all over one section, which helps hold the embankment but also prevents natives from re-seeding. 

The project begins!

After twelve years of working full time and part time, raising two children on my own, rescuing animals, living vegetarian and as organic as I could afford, I reached a point in my life last year where everything changed.  I quit my job, came to terms with living alone for the first time, and tried to find out what the last quarter of my life would embrace.  Just as in  nature, the answer was close by.  It was my property, a watershed filled with Washingtonia palm trees (unsellable and fire hazards).  Every year here in San Diego county, the rains come and all the neighborhood water funnels through my property down to a shallow stream below.  Tons of water pass by my house.  The rest of the year we bake and dry out, and I pay for irrigation water.  In researching how to keep that precious rainwater, I discovered permaculture.   Although I’d heard the term permaculture, I only vaguely knew what it meant.  Have you ever discovered something that makes so much sense and makes your life so much better that you are amazed that you lived so long without discovering it?  Yep, me too.  That’s what happened this time.  Permaculture is a wholistic means of living naturally where you no longer live in competition with nature, but as a part of it.  By creating swales, rain catchment ponds and spongy rain-absorbing loam water is retained in your property.  Creating plant guilds, edible forest gardens (even the term makes my foodie soul sing!), and natural greywater filtration, can all be done by everyone wherever they live without a great deal of expense.  The term permaculture was coined by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the 1970’s.  It incorporates many of the practices I’ve already done in my life: organic veggies, the slow-food movement, raising chickens (for eggs and manure), beekeeping, planting bird and butterfly attracting plants, and no-till gardening.  So I said to myself, “Duh!” (envision me smacking my head with my open palm).  I can do this, I have the resources, and what better healthy, exciting path could I choose for myself? I asked a friend, landscape architect and activist Roger Boddaert to help me on this project, and together we’ve started down this exciting path of learning and creating. Roger is an overflowing well of information, inspiration and ideas, and envisions turning this adventure outwards to educate everyone we can about permaculture.  This part of my blog is the progress on my land as we get the basics down.  Thanks for walking the path with us!