past garden projects number two local revolt

Originally named “End of the Line”, Local Revolt (the linked interview and its out-of-context editing and framing used to make me really angry, now it is just funny and reads like bad satire) was a short lived anarchist house. After three years, its vision of becoming a collective never really materialized although we often called ourselves a collective. Plenty of folks came and went…bands played, art shows were held, films were screened, books were loaned, protests were planned, shit was talked. I was the only person to stay there from start to finish, living in each of the three bedrooms at some point along the way. I may have been the only person that actually loved that house, but even I knew when it was time for it to come to an end.

We had a Free Store that was abused by anyone who wanted to come and dump their junk on us. We had an open door policy that allowed a homeless prophet to move in for a month and eat all our food and watch free cable all day in the basement. We had a lax housemate policy that brought in some sketchy folks who had to be kicked out after very short stays.

We had loud housemates, housemates who wanted to run us into the ground with their window AC units, housemates that would never come out of their room. In total there were fourteen people who revolved through the bedrooms. In addition there were dozens of travelers. I am still in contact with a few of those traveler folks, and most were great to hang out with. Whether they had hitchhiked or hopped a train into town for something to do or were biking the East Coast or walking from the West Coast and back, everyone had a story that stuck with me.

Anyway, this is supposed to be a post about a garden…

I started a garden even before I officially moved into the house. I slept on couch cushions on the floor in my room, but didn’t care as long as I got some beans and tomatoes and squash and flowers in the ground as soon as possible. The area of the garden was pretty shady, so I had to get creative with its placement.

One of the first things to go in were the compost bins. The next was a driveway garden.

The bins are in the back right of the picture. The driveway garden usually had the greens, lettuce and a smattering of sunflowers. I grew edible nasturtiums and cosmos as well.

After the first year the gardens got a little bigger. I was able to clear some vines and small trees from a fence area in order to get more light and focus on the backyard garden. Cherry tomatoes, beans, greens and summer squash all did pretty well there. Basil and rosemary also did well, but other herbs didn’t really take.

The garden was often a happy mess of a place. The garden gate was the aluminum decoration from an old screen door. Office filing shelves served as compost sifters. Metal shelving supports from the Office Depot dumpster made up the bean trellis. Notice the assorted chairs rescued from the garbage as well as the gaggle of duck decoys on the porch railing. The porch itself was a disaster. One of the old housemates briefly tied his dog to one of the columns. The dog ripped the column out, breaking part of the flashing that attached to the house thereby setting up the roof to leak for the next two years.

We moved out during the summer when tomatoes and squash were coming off. I was pretty depressed about leaving, so I left a lot of the stuff unharvested. The garden was tilled under soon after I left and is probably a nice, green, chemically altered lawn at this point…

I’ll break the suspense on this thread of past gardens; none of the three in this series are still around.