Growing Space, Growing Community

Last month, Scott and I finished a huge project in the backyard. We turned our poorly designed main garden path, a wonky, sloping mess of torn up landscape cloth (come on, it's never a good idea) and decomposed granite (an even worse idea on a slope) that pre-existed my purchase of the property into a sturdy stone and gravel staircase.

It was hard work. We have no way to push a wheelbarrow through the house and into the backyard, so we hand carried all the stones and gravel through the garage, through the downstairs bedroom, and out the back up the hill. We sketched out the stair case, then built each step one at a time, tested it, tore it out if we needed to, and rebuilt it. We paid attention to how our feet landed along the path and the purposeful curve. When stones we had set with morter didn't stick, we pulled them out and set them again.

When we finished, we ended up with something that looks like it's on purpose. It winds up to the brick patio we also rebuilt to the evenness of a dance floor. On the patio perch at the top of our property, we can sit in our comfy blue adirondak chairs and admire the view of downtown or huddle around the fire pit. Our very livable backyard makes the inside of the home feel ten times bigger. I've already taken two naps in the chairs, reading until I fall asleep. Scott's started talking about adding a hot tub close to the house. My stepdaughter uses the patio to practice her back walkovers and handstands. Both kids have played ping pong and have chosen to be outside more than ever.

While the backyard has made my home feel larger, the community has made my backyard bigger.

In April of 2018, I started a group that meets up once a month to share produce, plants, seeds, and other garden materials and that asks each other questions, sharing our knowledge and experience. When I first started the group, we met in the local park. But, soon, I figured it out would be better to meet up in various members' yards, so we all could learn by the experience of seeing each other's spaces. Members starting drumming up a name for ourselves; Seedheads stuck. Since then, we've met in yards that are immaculately kept, in yards that are wild and ridiculously productive, in yards that are mostly concrete but have been turned into garden spaces through containers, hale bales, and other creative means. We've met at a special open-to-all community garden, and we've met in several gardens with unique chicken coops. We've shared seedlings and flowers and jams, wild-harvested mussels and seeds and fruit, bread and cuttings and lots and lots of ideas.

The Seedheads mailing list now includes over 80 members scattered across the southeast corner of San Francisco. The group crosses lines of gender, age, ethnicity, and socio-economics. Yet, we all love to grow and build, so together, we do.

2019 Garlic Harvest

Blergh.

You know what doesn't grow well in San Francisco's Garden District, or at least has not yet grown well for me? 

Garlic.

You know I love growing garlic. In previous gardens, I've grown more garlic than I could use in a year. I shared it with neighbors and grew out many different heirloom varieties. But here, there are challenges galore for my allium friends.

The garlic I planted in October started so well in the fall and grew steadily through winter. Christmas came and a gopher (or two) stole about a tenth of the crop. I cursed gophers. One variety, Belarus, a previous favorite in other gardens, broomed. The plants divided early into cloves which then tried to grow as individual plants, so when I pulled them up, they were just clusters of tiny cloves and stems rather than a single heads of regular sized cloves. I cursed brooming. As late winter hit, so did the rust, and some plants gave up entirely while others struggled along. I cursed rust.

A few weeks ago, I pulled my runted garlic from the bed. The plants were covered with rust and they had already bulbed up as much as they would. I shook the dirt off the plants, bundled them to dry under the eaves where they wouldn't get any drizzle—if there were to be any—and planted a cover crop of red-blossomed buckwheat and cowpeas in their former bed. Yesterday, I pulled the cured garlic bunches down to clean up for storage. Ugliness awaited: all the artichoke varieties (eg Red Toch and Kettle River Giant) had rotted. Instead of drying out in the breeze and shade, they turned into mushy stink bombs. So, I cursed rot.

Gophers, rust, brooming, rot. The garlic has not had a good year.

What broomed garlic looks like.

My complete measly harvest. 

I'm going to try one more time this fall, planting out only the three varieties that seemed to be able to survive the onslaught a little better than others. The hardneck varieties appeared to fare better against the rust and weren't at all affected by rot. One hardneck, Belarus, broomed, so that one is out. Another, Early Portuguese, didn't do much of anything. So that leaves three I'll try again next year: Basque, Rose du Lautrec, and Burgundy. I'll gopher wire the allium bed when I dig in the cover crop, and I'll plant the cloves really far apart, leaving plenty of room for wind to dry humidity off the plants. But, if I can't get a good crop next year, I'll stop trying with garlic and use the space for other winter crops. It will be more room in which to experiment.

Basque, one of the few varieties I'll try again next year.

Are you listening to me, little bulbs? If you don't shape up, your space will go to somebody else.

The 29th

A few days ago, I ran into my ex-husband at the grocery store. I hadn't seen him in over three years. When I first saw him, I had to search my brain for a second. Then I couldn't believe it. I could see the same processes going through his face. We smiled at each other, greeted each other with a hug, and chatted for a few minutes.

It was strange to see him, but in no way sad or discomforting. I left our conversation very happy.

I no longer know him in the way I once did, his daily breath and movement, frustrations and hopes, but I am still deeply familiar with him. I could tell he was nervous seeing me. He has a telltale mouth twitch that happens when he's anxious. The same mouth twitch I saw on our first date a decade and a half ago twitched powerfully as we talked the other day. Within our few minutes of conversation, I heard refrains that were so familiar to me, they could have been lifted from a script I might have written about a conversation with him.

Later in the afternoon, I drove my nine-year-old stepdaughter home from summer camp and she told me all about what she had done that day. She asked me about my day and I told her that I had run into my ex-husband. She asked, "How did you divorce?" I told her an honest and abbreviated story of our marriage and divorce.

A little over a year after the marriage with my ex-husband dissolved, I met Scott. We fell in love, married, and I became stepmother to my stepdaughter and stepson. I gained an instafam. When one joins a pre-existent family, one learns quickly that the family has formed habits and roles that have none of the new member's influence. I'm learning how to be a stopmom and what my role is here, and I probably will be learning this for the rest of my life.

Despite my lack of experience in a parenting role, there are at least traditions and experiences I feel confident offering this family of mine. I can share with them my mom's Saturday morning crepes and Christmastime cardamom bread. I can teach them the weird little miracles of the plant world and how to identify California wildflowers. I can geek out over the details of the Narnia Chronicles with them and take them for really long walks full of stopping to look at things. These are things that come from me, my parents, and my brother. But there are things I collected from being married to my ex-husband that I want to share with my newish family too.

One of those things is ñoquis on the 29th.

My ex-husband told me briefly, early in our relationship, in Argentina gnocchi—or ñoquis in Spanish—was a lucky meal when eaten on the 29th of a month, and people placed money under their plate during the meal for financial luck in the following month. Soon after he told me this, a good friend and I stopped in for lunch at an Argentine place. It happened to be the 29th, and we happened to order a large plate of ñoquis to share. The waiter delivered our plate and walked a few steps away, then turned to watch us. When neither my friend nor I picked up our plate to place a bill under it, he came back to the table.

"Stop. Stop. I can't let you keep eating right now." He was adamant. "I'm too superstitious." He pulled out his own wallet and placed a dollar bill under our plate. "You must have money under your plate when you eat ñoquis." So we ate our meal over his money. I don't know if that meant we were to be lucky the following month or if he was. Either way, it made the ñoquis more fun to eat.

Later in my relationship with my ex-husband, my ex-mother-in-law, a woman I still count as very dear to me, sent me an article from the Houston Chronicle about the Argentine tradition. Ñoquis are the food of poverty and, historically, by the end of the month, sometimes not much was left in the larder but potatoes. This dish became the meal to eat towards the end of the month while hoping for a less difficult month ahead. People place money under their plates in the hope that somehow doing so will bring wealth the following month.

This past week, Scott, the kids, and I weren't able to eat together on the 29th, so we cheated and ate ñoquis on the 28th. I had hoped that we'd have fun family time making ñoquis together, but the kids were a combination of both wired and tired, and making dinner as a team didn't happen. We sat down to eat later than I had hoped. Scott placed a bill under each of our plates. Each of us enjoyed the little potato pillows, so much so that I brought the pot of water to boil again to make seconds for each of us from the reserved pile of dumplings.

I don't think eating ñoquis over money will make us luckier. I do think that luck is partly attitude. I appreciate (but see the limits within) my colleague's grandmother's famous refrain, "Luck is in the backbone, not the wishbone." But, I want to eat ñoquis with my stepkiddos whenever I can on the 29th. It's a small way I model to my stepkids that when life twists in ways that hurt, when it surprises you with its jabs and taunts, those hurts don't have to be endings but can be beginnings.

My hurts led me to my stepkids. I'm incredibly grateful.

Making and Eating Ñoquis 
I really like the Serious Eats resource on gnocchi. My ex-mother-in-law used to encourage me to bake potatoes rather than boil them for lighter dumplings, and this Serious Eats recipe follows that approach.

My family loves Hazan's famous tomato-butter sauce on our ñoquis.