The Return of "VICTORY GARDENS'

''EAT TO LIVE, DO NOT LIVE TO EAT'

''VICTORY GARDENS'' :

"gardeners could feel empowered by their contribution of labor and rewarded by the produce grown."


I believe people are the power for any change. I want to be the change too.

My Heros:

The Dervae family of 4 who work together and plant sooooo much in edibles on their small property, it is absolutely INSPIRING! Please watch this 15 minute Award Winning Short Film.

I can't embed their other film on youtube but please also watch "The Dervaes family Garden".

These people are my hero's because they grow literally! over 6000 lbs of foods on one tenth of an acre! Yes you read that right.....if there is any wise use of land, it is this.

I Aspire to this. I want to do something right, something good, not just for myself but for others, at least those near to me. I want to be an expression of love, and in my world, that expression means Beauty and Bounty, virtues which extend not just with me, but into what I do with the land I live on. This land is here to give me (us) nourishment and beauty and life and care for my soul....this is the Mother's Love.....I want to be a human extension of Her love........and so I'm a gardener.....With Her.

In my quest to leave a Legend of Beauty as my Legacy while I live, and when I'm gone, everywhere I find myself living, I plant gardens.
On this particular property it happens my housemate also likes gardening and though I do 90% of the work and plantings and he is allowing, open and does some fix-up things I cannot do. It must be working because people knock on our door to either compliment or offer to sell the property that week! It is far from an estate house, but a cozy Hobbit Cottage....and this has been told to us by others too.
It's not for sale.
It is a canvas for me to paint a beautiful landscape in which I and others can enter my own creation!, enter the garden myself, and smell the scents, eat what grows and touch the softest petals of flowers that bloom, find joy in the butterflies that flutterby, and red dragonflies who greet me every time I walk outside, birds who are no longer shy and walk next to us and even land on my housemates legs, animals who find shelter, and a sparkle in the air when the Mother is healthy and in joy of our efforts with Her. There is sooooo much we can do and I want to do it all.

I want to not only garden I want to cultivate delight......grow Beauty........nurture Joy.....and sleep with whimsy.

So I garden, both in the soil, and in my own mind.

On this property there is much to do, now that I have claimed this house I've lived in for 10 years now, a "home", with the blessings of my housemate. I have done much already, a bit of which is expressed throughout this blog.
Right now, however, I'm looking to make the space of this property useful especially the space the grass takes up otherwise known as "lawn"....a term which is banal to me.

Grass is here only to tell us humans "here is the space in which you can grow edibles to feed you or flowers to delight you, and if you choose not to, then it is the indispensable ingredient to recycle that which has not been used or that which is left from what has been used.....grass is the necessary ingredient for your compost, which returns, recycles that which I have given you back to its origins, so I may begin again, and continue to give to you and your children". 

Thank you Mother!

The compost is actually one of my most favorite aspects of gardening for it takes what is ignorantly called "garbage" and alchemically turns it into the richest, most alive black soil nutrient one can imagine. I don't understand people who do not compost. That kind of ignorance or neglect is beyond my scope of understanding.

So, I have plans for the space here where the grass is growing, but right now it is indispensable to my compost for it makes Black Gold (soil) from my vegetal waste, for luscious, delectable, rejuvenating, beauty promoting foods.

A person's health and appearance is testament to the wisdom they live or don't live.
I want to be, at the very least, wise and beautiful.

In watching the many videos for inspiration of the Dervae Family, I saw one instant where one of the women were picking tomatoes from an entire wall! I never forgot that image and I wanted to do that myself. In my awe, I asked my housemate to come over and see what the potential is for his own property, to show him what these people did with the same size property, and what we could do if he were so inspired. That kind of work is not his way, and I cannot do it alone, but one thing stuck with him as I got so excited about it was the wall of tomatoes. One day he said, as we contemplated what to do with one of the 7 veggie beds we have based on the season and the amount of sun etc, was that he would like to have that wall of tomatoes. I didn't waste a second, I said "lets do it!".....I had already figured out how to do it, what needed to be done, and how to stake them etc, on the spot and explained it all to him and he was smiling happy he didn't have to figure that one out. I hadn't explained what to do once the height began until a few days ago when coincidentally he found a grid type tomato holder and left it out when I decided now was the time to explain the genius :D:D of the ''wall'' part using those grids, and when I explained it and the beauty of its simplicity, I saw him finally relax about how the "wall part" would be done, (it didn't involve him lol ), he smiled and said "this is a beautiful thing!"......which is a new expression for him (and shows his depression is virtually gone.)

We have now planted it and I'm seeing some exciting things happen for the first time in 10 years on this property growing tomatoes. I've never seen this much growth before and everything on this property at this time is doing extremely well.....for some magical reason I'm having alot of whimsical fun entertaining :D

Though one practical  reason I've learned is the magical ingredient.....STRAW or HAY.
Soil, or the Mother's skin does NOT like to be exposed. It is why weeds grow over soil where humans have failed to garden.....the skin/soil must remain covered so the life promoting organisms known as microbes and insects can do their work, in moist and dark soil, undercover, and keep the soil alive. The soil or skin also must remain covered so as to remain moist and not dry out. I learned this in the most difficult of ways. Now that I keep all of her soil covered, things grow!

I am going to make a post about straw soon this in my series "In Awe of Mother Nature".


So here are pictures of that tomato bed which is fast becoming the Wall! This is an 8 ft by 3 ft patch.

Week one. Around 21 small plants were planted between the mustard and arugula greens which are the large leafed ones. You can barely see them, right? There are a few larger ones too.

Week 2. They have grown 4 times their original size in 6 days already needing cages. For me, this is huge growth.

Week 3. They have doubled again in size. Many flowers on them, and around a dozen baby tomatoes so far.

My Toy Box Garden......has a dozen tomatoes growing, the most I've seen ever growing on one plant. Even on a dozen different plants I never had a dozen tomatoes all together!

I'm InJoying!


Bountiful Blessings to you and yours.


I'm sharing this post with A Delightsome Life: Home and Garden Thursday