This is a picture of my garden. My sanctuary. It's in the Allendale neighborhood of Oakland. In 2004, when we moved in, this was an expanse of green, green grass. Anthony, the previous owner, loved his lawn. I'm sure he watered and fertilized and mowed meticulously. As soon as we moved in we began to rototill and mulch and dig and pretty much kill all the grass, meticulously.
Slowly we've transformed this space from a monoculture of grass into a small urban farm and hangout spot. We built a chicken coop (you can see it in the upper left corner of the photo) and a chicken run along the back for our hens. Back when we rented in the Tesmescal neighborhood, our landlord was kind enough to let us keep a couple chickens in a chicken tractor. When we bought a house, the chickens got a house, too! We also put in a vegetable garden and fenced it off from our rambunctious dog. We planted trees: plum, cherry, lemon, lime, orange, pineapple guava. A couple summers ago we even laid down a small path/patio with natural slate stone.
It was a lot of work, but it was all worth it. There were some in-between years where out backyard was no sanctuary, but rather a battle zone of weeds, compost, and chicken poop. But 5 years later, here we are. If Anthony could see it now.
My favorite garden hang out to sit and watch the chicken channel...
What's the chicken channel? Looks a little something like this.
A mid-battle picture of the garden from 3 years ago. As you can see, we hadn't killed off all the grass... yet.
