As the summer season winds down, here are some before and afters of our little front yard where we've been replacing the lawn with gardens. We added some native plants and some flowers for beauty and the pollinators, but mostly everything needed to be food or medicine. It's pretty messed up that planting food is now somehow a privilegey thing to do when growing food and farming was mostly always done by poorer people, but here we are: not everyone has the time, the space, the access to decent soil, clean water, sunlight, able-bodiedness, a knowledge base, and the means to purchase organic, local, native seeds and plants. The barriers are very real. It's not like it increases the value of your home, bizarrely. But at the same time, you'd be hard-pressed to convince me there isn't something you can grow and eat. Even when I was renting and on food stamps. Yes, it's a lot of work. I struggle with how much pain I'm in after working even just an hour or so. My chiropractor remarked that when studying cadavers, the farmer's heart was literally twice the size as the desk job guy's. The colonial history of lawns and manicured gardens is super gross. People watering their lawns blow my fuckin' mind. Anyway. A few of the neighbors have started tearing up their lawns too. We've expanded the collab garden next door to the next family down the block where this year we grew squash and tomatoes in their parking strip. I know a lot more about their family now. We have more neighbor's phone numbers this year to share all the extra produce. Here's a partial list of what we planted: Apple tree Comfrey Beets Radishes Onions Leeks Kale (JFC, way too much kale. Do y'all need any? I will drop some off.) Perennial spinach chard Butternut squash Carrot Green beans Tomatoes Marigold Amaranth Calendula Salal Rhubarb Blueberries Sunflowers Basil Cucumber Ground cherry Bearberry Thyme Dill Parsley Cilantro Feverfew Blue Hyssop Angelica Valerian Bee Balm Chamomile Yarrow Echinacea St Johns Wort Datura Moonflower Clematis Zinnia Daisy Black Eyed Susan Nasturtium Red madder Day Lily Poppy Shout out to @resiliencedesign and #HarrietFasenfast (at Portland, Oregon) https://www.instagram.com/p/CixrL6upvLp/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=