la avenida is all the way live...

been a wild couple of weeks. with all the rain and cold weather (40º nights! brrrr) the kale has been going off. brohim set us up with some dwarf fruit rootstock and guava bushes which have gone in to provide much needed greenery to our otherwise bakersfield looking scene... the hardest part about all this is having the patience to realize that turning a neglected, compacted compound where the prior owners did all they could to kill everything green into an edible compound of love doesn't happen over night.

in fact, much as the WWII nerve gas chemicals were turned into pesticides and fertilizers, we aren't gonna be free of the 50 years of neglect any time soon. everytime we turn over a bed, dozens of bottle caps and broken toys come up. like the Homie version of La Santisima Muerte that our german wwoofer friend unearthed from his sepulchre under buried flagstone. it's a little disheartening to be finding plastic shit everywhere and the old bonfire pits where the last renters started random fires to burn their trash. but little by little, things are changing. the blueberries and strawberries are reclaiming the brown. the silverberry and guava hover over the artichokes and collards with their almost birdlike coloring. the passiflora vines are slowly beginning their steady creeps over concrete and stucco...

things will come around. like the 1978 carving on the sidewalk says.. "the avenue is all the way live..."