Making Of Gardens

We are lucky to have a garden like this although this didn’t happen right when we just moved in. It required a lot of imaginations, learning, and hard work. The housing inflation in the Bay Area puts many of us in small cubicle apartments (and still expensive) with almost no balcony space.

When I first saw the ad of our apartment, I was immediately captured by the description, “cottage style.’’ The apartment was old but renovated and had a large outdoor space. It was one of the few apartments in the area that provided the feel of a detached single house. It’s probably hard to imagine now but our balcony used to have bare concrete throughout and a tiny patch of soil at the corner, where we saw a potential planting something.

The first thing Nicolai (husband) wanted was a palm tree, which he has developed this romantic connection to while growing up in cold Denmark. We rented and drove a pick-up truck all the way to All Tropical Palms Nursery in Gilroy. We took home the last available King Palm.

Now here comes the challenging part, digging. (I wish we had Uni back then…) The corner patch had two layers of soil, the bad soil on top and the rock hard clay down below. We alternatively dug out the soil, covered in sweat and dirt, and finally planted the palm tree. The king palm has become the core of the garden. We planted some drought tolerant plants around and put up the string lights along the fence. The next step was laying out the assembable teak tiles, which we imported from Denmark. In the middle of the hot summer, we held a cold drink in one hand and enjoyed our newly renovated garden space, which almost reminded me of a Japanese Tsuboniwa (a courtyard garden).

This year, the vine has outgrown bigger than ever and secluded our garden well from the neighbors. Carpenter bees are our frequent visitors. Once in a while we get to see our special guest, a hummingbird.

The other corner of the garden, we have another king palm and two happy cactuses, which we named Rodriguez and Rolita. The cute plant baskets are from Ikea.

The bird feeding cage is from Eva Solo, which is one of my favorite Danish lifestyle brands. We can see many different kinds of birds throughout the year thanks to this. Especially during the winter when the food is scarce for the birds, they stick around our garden.

Last year, our apartment management, who probably got tired of taking care of their communal area, gave us the extended garden space, which we turned into a veggie garden. Now, this space is almost Uni’s playground but our veggie garden is still thriving. We got too greedy and planted way too many veggies last year. We successfully harvested tomatoes, eggplants, sweet chillies, and peppers while lettuce, watermelon radish, and chillies didn’t come out so well. This year, learning from the mistakes, we have planted a fewer veggies, which are zucchinis, tomatoes, eggplants, and cucumbers.

Here, Uni is taking care of our herb garden. We got Thai basils, parsley, Italian basils, thymes, and chives.

Our chillies are not growing well this year so we have transferred them into these recyclable pods, which are actually made for composting. None of our chillies got spicy last year and we learned that they need a lot of sunlight to turn into burning hot chillies.

Living and working in Silicon Valley is sometimes exhausting. Everyday discussion is about AI, wearable, VR/AR, 5G…..and bla bla bla. It is so nice to have an escape, where you can surround yourself in greens, birds, smell of flowers and the teak from the wooden deck. This is our hideaway from all the tech madness and to recharge our mind.

Greetings in Japanese

お庭のあるコテージスタイルと言われ、引越しを決めたのがもう２年前。ヤシの木が大好きなニコライ（旦那さん）の念願で、遠出し大きなキングパルムを買い取り、真夏の暑い気候の中２人で土を一生懸命掘ったのも今では良い思い出です。植物が年々増え、緑が生い茂る憩いの空間となりました。

去年、反対側に新しい庭を設けて、これはラッキーと夢のベジタブルガーデンを作りました。カリフォルニアの太陽の力を借り、初めての本格的な家庭菜園です。今では半分ウニちゃんの遊び場化していますが....。春の初めにズッキーニ、キュウリ、ナス、トマト、チリを大きいほうのプランターに、よく使うハーブを小さい方に植えました。

テクノロジーの話が中心のシリコンバレーの生活で、こういった憩いの場は本当にありがたいです。今年は豊作になるでしょうか。楽しみです。お庭を素敵にするデザインアイテムは本文のほうで。