Today I posted a video sharing our launch of the new kitchen garden:

Daisy and I are working on this space together, as it will be both a place for growing food for the table and for saving seeds for her plant nursery. The other kids are helping here and there as well, especially the little ones who like to be wherever we are.

After the events in today’s video, we got more kids together and cleared a larger piece of the Sidewalk to Nowhere. Daisy and I also built a couple more beds and paths that connect with the first one we built.

The heat has made working outside unpleasant, but we are getting some done in the morning and evening as we can. But mid-day in an Alabama summer is terrible! Even the mornings are so humid that your shirt is soaked with sweat after minimal exertion. Fortunately, in a few months, the weather will be great and we can work all day.

Experiencing the heat of a Deep South summer makes fall all the nicer when it arrives.

The idea of meandering paths through a cottage garden / kitchen garden is appealing to me. I don’t have to make a big garden all at once here. We can take our time and use permanent materials so it looks beautiful. The pieces of slab and bricks we’ve been finding in the woods make nice pathways. It’s time-consuming, but we’re making it happen.

One bite at a time.

On our previous properties, we were too constrained by weirdly planned spaces that we had to suffer through as renters.

Here we can walk out from the kitchen, through a little porch and into the garden. We don’t have to walk down stairs and around to the backyard, or walk a hundred feet through the trees to get to our garden, or, like we did at one rental, walk a block and a half to the garden we were growing on borrowed land.

We are planting a garden in the space most convenient to the kitchen. Previously, it was a fenced area full of a half-dozen dogs. Now we are readapting it.

I, for one, am tired of buying produce! A few months of moving is no good for gardening. In a few weeks, we should have a decent fall garden going, then by some time in October we ought to be getting harvests for the kitchen again.