The garden started as a joke. When asked what activities we both enjoyed, my fiance and I just looked at each other and laughed. Gardening? Eventually the joke became an aspiration. We both liked the idea of gardening: fresh air, a tactile activity, fresh veggies at the end. So one spring weekend, we got outside to tackle the years worth of weeds growing in our small backyard. After about five minutes, I decided it was too much work. So much for gardening. Instead, as I hunched over my master’s thesis on the computer, he got out into the backyard with some hired day laborers and started pulling up weeds. Once the weeds were cleared, they mixed sand into the clay-filled soil to amend it.  More bricks were brought it to complete the small brick patio dividing two sides of the yard. Finally, a trip to the garden store yielded flower bushes for the shady side and several varieties of veggie starts for the sunny side.

Gardening gives a rhythm to the year, even in a mild climate like California. Many Jewish holidays have agrarian roots– primarily Shavuot,  Sukkot,  Tu’biShevat.  Other holidays may also have come from an adherence to seasonal patterns.  For instance, I love the way the high holidays come around every year to mark the fall, and hannukah lights up winter. However, these holidays are rooted in the seasonal changes of another land. Being connected to the land right where I live, that’s what the garden brings me. Both the Jewish holidays and the rhythm of the garden bring me closer to the earth in different ways.

More about our second year of gardening as the spring turns into summer and the adventure continues…

P.S. This book has been an invaluable guide to gardening in the micro-climates of San Francisco.