Pulling up an old tree stump to clear a way for a strawberry patch revealed an amazing discovery. The trunk and roots of the stump were hollowed by years of decomposition and contained a fungi that first unearthed appeared a soft sagey green. When exposed to light the green darkened through several hues of blue until it landed on an indigo. This all happened fast enough to perceive the change while it was occurring. I have asked one of my past college biology professors what kind of fungus this is. I am waiting to hear back…

In the four years I have been in our home, the backyard has seen some significant changes. The first was it’s clearing.
 

 
As with the front yard, the back had seen years of neglect. Trash was piled high and the blackberry bramble had taken over. The only real “features” were an abandoned avocado tree that a neighbor says stopped producing fruit in the mid-1980s, a loquat tree, and two towering poplars. I cleared the debris and made way for the second event, which was our wedding.
 

 
Dipak and I decided to hold our nontraditional Hindu wedding in the backyard. Our family and friends were very forgiving of the sloping grade, sinking chairs and brisk evening temperature. The food was great, the music even better and, well, we got married. The third event was the installation of a chicken coop. I’ve provided more details on how we developed the chicken coop in the posts about the coop.
 

 
The fourth transformation was the collapsing of an eighty-foot poplar tree. Notice the smashed chicken coop.
 

 
During a storm in February 2006, a gust of wind ripped one of our poplars in half. The first half, slowly but definitively crashed through our back fence and onto a gas station directly behind us. It crushed a car and ripped out a phone line that provided service to our own and a couple of neighboring homes. As it turns out, I was standing approximately fifteen feet from the tree as this occurred. Having gotten a safe distance and realizing the tree was not falling in my direction, it was hard not to stay riveted and watching. I immediately reported said incident to my husband. We looked through our window in time to see the other half teeter and fall to the side through a side fence, directly on top of the chicken coop (the hens miraculously survived even after the firemen pronounced them dead when I asked that they be rescued. Note: chicken rescue is not high on priority list). This tree half ripped through our neighbor’s lovely citrus orchard and onto her house, punching a discreet hole in her roof in the process. It was disastrous. Over the next couple of days, I was not feeling particularly inspired by the fact that our chickens had taken up residence in our basement and were laying eggs on the stairs. However, in the midst of chaos, Dipak made a brilliant observation. He noted that there would be full light in the back now for me to plant a garden, a full garden. A full vegetable garden!
 

 
So we rebuilt the coop and I created beds for our new garden. The last transformation, and perhaps the most profound, has been the creation of an organic edible landscape. Over the two years this garden has been in the making there have been subtle but deep changes. One has been the shift in the variety of weeds growing. There were very few weeds in the back. Garlic chives had invaded the entire space making a garlicky thick grass each spring. However in the short two years of composting, turning and cover cropping, there are now many opportunistic plants enjoying the soil. Another big change is that the sad and brittle avocado tree has grown glossy leaves and even flowered for the first time after many years. It has yet to be determined if this flowering is from the soil or from an old farmer’s trick of whipping a dormant fruit tree (more about that later). Either way, it is apparent that the soil has improved, plants are finding greater nutrition, and the ecology of the backyard has shifted into abundance.
 

I have been following the developments of my friend’s Kenyan top bar hive for nearly four years now. They have been kind enough to tolerate my endless questions. I have wanted a beehive for years. I want to monitor their impact on the edible garden. I want to observe honeybees. I want honey. Who doesn’t? This year, I have won the bee lottery. I was provided a swarm (thank you Claudio!) and my amazing bee friends Lawrence and Timur gave me a top bar hive choke full of honey! The hive has been thriving in a junkyard in San Francisco. They brought it over and helped me do some maintenance on it, harvest the honey, and figure out what was going on with my new Langstoth hive.
 

 
We gathered our equipment: hats, veils, latex dish gloves, jeans, white hoodie, covered ankles, smoker, hive tool, feather, wire thing to release comb from the sides and bottom, smoker, a spray bottle with sugar water, and two 5 gallon buckets. We then removed entrance reducer and outer cover of the hive and started to gently pry the bars away from the hive body.
 

 
We removed six bars from each side of the hive, placing honeycomb on one bucket and brood comb (where they keep the babies) in another. We had to remove some of the brood comb so they do not become outgrow the hive and swarm to find other housing.
 

 
Its a very good thing that we did this because they had actually started forming “swarm cells.” These is a special type of brood chamber where they raise queens. Once a queen is ready to hatch from the swarm cell, the hive splits in half and buzzes away. Once we replaced the removed bars with clean bars, we closed things up and hid the buckets in my basement. We didn’t want any bees to find where their stolen honey was being stored or they would come buzzing around none too happy. I cleaned off the used top bars and other equipment. I removed the brood comb from the white bucket and cleaned with warm water and some dish soap. Then I began the process of harvesting the honey. The first thing I did was mash the comb with a potato masher.
 

 
I lined the freshly clean white 5 gallon bucket with an unused paint strainer and placed a large expandable strainer on top. Next, I used a large stainless steel spoon to scoop globs of wax and honey into the expandable strainer.
 

 
The honey filtered through the metal strainer and the paint strainer making it good, clean and edible. It took three batches to empty the bucket of comb. Each batch filtered about an hour and a half. At the end the paint strainer needed to be removed and the honey drained to try to recover as much honey as possible.
 

 
Once this was done, I was able to ladle the honey into jars. A bucket with a spigot at the bottom would be better but I don’t have one yet so its ladling for me. I also used a wide mouth canning funnel to make it easier to pour into the jars.
 

 
I was able to harvest 18.75 lbs of honey! Yum!
 

 
Next I will process the wax…

 
I just planted some hops rhizomes (Humulus lupulus). We are trying Cascade, Centennial, Brewer’s Gold, Williamette and Northern Brewers varieties. This project, as with the others, is an experiment. I have never grown hops. I have only read their botanical classification, their properties, and how to administer their care. Only time will tell if they are getting all that they need. I am very curious to see how they grow. I have read that at maturity the hop buds have a strong aroma. We will have 50 feet of vine growing along our driveway. Given its family classification of Cannabaceae, I can only imagine what that aroma is going to be like.
 
Apparently, Humulus lupulus has distinct medicinal properties as well. The same female buds used for beer making can also be used as a sleep aid, tension reducer and digestive aid due to the plants antispasmodic, soporific and sedative effects. All very useful, particularly the “antispaz” effect. The buds can be used in a tincture, tea as well as eaten. One preparation in Italy, bruscàndoli, has them in risotto. Another in Northern Europe, consists of dipping them in batter and frying them, like an Indian bhajji. It appears, come harvest time, the Pallana household is about to be well fed and calm, very calm.
 
After reading the book, The Homebrewer’s Garden: How to Easily Grow, Prepare, and Use Your Own Hops, Malts, Brewing Herbs, I also planted an assortments of herbs that can be incorporated into beer. Herbs like coriander, hyssop, clary sage, Greek oregano, lavender, rosemary, thyme and sage to name a few. At this rate, we can look forward to having our home brewed beer sometime in October. Hey, whoa, is this why beer is such an integral part of the German Oktoberfest?! It appears, according to some, we will be right on schedule.

 
After four years and many lessons learned, our front yard has filled in and requires only occasional maintenance. Original concepts for the yard included: Plant selection: Plants that fit a profile of drought resistant; evergreen; attracts pollinators, particularly butterflies and hummingbirds; and native if possible. Perennials and annuals were selected for their ease of maintenance. I found out options by going to my local nurseries, touring local gardens through gardening clubs (the Bay Friendly Garden Tours offers great examples of innovative garden designs), and reading through multiple California specific landscape books. Since this time, East Bay Municipal Utility District (MUD) has published a very useful book, Plants and Landscapes for Summer-Dry Climates, which features native California and Mediterranean plants, lots of photos and garden examples.
 
The green fence: Our neighborhood suffers occasional bouts of crime so a clear boundary is a good idea. It prevents garbage from being thrown into the yard and it gives a screen of privacy. However, a fence that abutts a sidewalk can appear unfriendly. We want a friendly community. So I proposed a boundary of greenery.


 
The Path: I decided I wanted a curved path to create focal points that would highlight certain featured plants or objects, like the birdhouse. Understandably Dipak was skeptical when I started digging the path with only a pile of bricks nearby and an internet print out of instructions in my back pocket. However, a brick path is fairly simple to create and, believe it or not, the information on the internet is sufficient to accomplish the task. It did require heavy labor though. We had to dig the path out 18-24inches deep in hard clay soil, which was like scraping granite with a spoon. We also had to lay river rocks, a drain pipe and sand before laying the bricks. Then some of the bricks had to be cut to fit the ends of the path. This required a circular saw, a brick cutting blade and some nerve.
 
Yard Shape: I am not big on flat yards with lots of right angles. I like curves and a more diverse terrain. I knew I wanted to round off the corners but when I dug the path I decided to try to sculpt with the displaced dirt. I was not certain that the dirt would stay in place but figured between the roots of plants and the landscape fabric it would be held down. The exceptions to the design include a small patch of lawn and roses, both of which are heavy feeders requiring more water and nutrition, but Dipak likes lawns and roses, and I like Dipak. Love weakens me. My original lawn was a native blue fescue but I did not know what I was doing and it did not work out. I instead planted seeds of a common fescue blend for high traffic areas. I am still researching possibilities for grasses that may work better. Sunset Magazine recently featured a no mow lawn seed mix which does not require as much maintenance but is still water needy. The search continues.
 

 
The end result is a front yard with a woodsy look that attracts small wildlife including a population of Chestnut Backed Chickadees that has returned three years in a row to raise chicks in our birdhouse.

 
Our deck has been rotten for three years but my idea to rebuild it was met with resistance. Even after someone’s leg went through a section I was informed that only some of the boards were bad. However, baking delicious loaves of country sourdough bread inspired visions of a bread oven. Somehow a hammock and upper deck got factored in and the impetus to launch the project was born. So we pulled the deck out, it really was rotten. More than just a few boards disintegrated in the process. No matter. Deconstruction and reclaiming the “good” wood was fun. Beneath our deck was a vivid habitat for many a creature including a couple of Carpenter Bees. They are shiny black cousins to bumble bee. They are very large. One took a particular interest in me. I must have ruined it lodging. No stings though, just a lot of bomber style diving toward me. There were more spiders than I could identify in the time we had. There were many Black Widows, which explains the source of my bite a few years back (I was fine just had a nasty looking thing happening on/in my leg). Note: rotting wood houses many o’creature. We also found a dead opossum which Dipak made me remove. He said that kind of stuff was my “department.” How does dead animal removal become someone’s department? Our hardy chickens helped out too by devouring all of the protein laden bugs they could find. See, we all benefited from removing the rotten deck; stronger chickens, better eggs, fewer spiders to handle, and the prospect of an outdoor spot.
 
A homeowner might use the words entropy and pests to describe all that we encountered but I think it is really quite beautiful that our deck had such a complex ecology reclaiming it. My busy urban location is home to so much more than first meets the eye. I love that.

We went to the city of Oakland’s department of planning and zoning to find out some details. When Dipak realized the extent of my projects he got excited. I am practicing the slow food concept in our backyard. I have a hive producing honey. I have hop rhizomes on the way in the mail and I have planted several varieties of herbs that can be used for brewing beer. In addition, after an excellent lesson at Urban Sprouts on fermentation led by my coworker, Lisa, I have also become quite adept at making fresh sourdough bread, fresh yogurt, and kombucha.
 
Dipak has a background in the restaurant business. He moved from Texas after selling a quite successful eclectic café, Cosmic Cup (which is still doing well). When he hears about these food projects, he thinks sales. He is deeply impressed by the quantity of herbs and vegetables I am able to harvest, not to mention our abundant egg source. I found him one morning perusing one of my build-your-own-spaceship-using-milk-cartons-and-dry chicken-dung books dreaming up a plan. I think he had a vision of something like a local food grocer café in our backyard.
 
So we went to find out if our zoning is commercial and allows sales; what kind of permits are required for this type of business; and to lightly inquire about whether Oakland has any regulations on beekeeping.
 
Oakland’s Planning and Zoning Department, located in the Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, is quite nice. We still had to wait with a number (a prerequisite for any government office) but it was quiet and it had no smells. I am accustomed to county buildings with crying babies, unhappy workers, and a plethora of bad smells, which always amazes me. Old county buildings somehow defy architectural logic by being both drafty and yet trapping foul smells. Makes me think of the physics term “spatial coherence of trapped gas.” An ideal Bose gas can form a condensate at a low enough temperature. Which makes sense because sometimes it does rather seem that the odors are dripping off the walls. But this is about city code not dismal city buildings.
 
I found bureaucratic speak confuses me. The gentleman that helped us responded to many questions with the assumption that if there is no city code on an activity, it’s probably isn’t allowable. I have a knee jerk reaction to that type of logic. It seems the antithesis of independent thought.
 
He then proceeded to tell us what activities gain the unfavorable attention of the city and which do not. Apparently, having cars jammed outside our already busy urban street and a long line trailing down to our yard (should we have been so successful) would be unfavorable. However, if we have a dinner with up to 15 friends in our house once a week, they won’t know about it (!?) and that is favorable. Likewise, if we have a delivery truck pull up in front our home to make a pick up each morning, they will find out, which the very act of is unfavorable but if we have a “lemonade stand” staffed by children, they won’t know, which again is favorable. I am feeling a moral dilemma coming on.
 
I don’t think we can have a grocer café in the back, unless of course fifteen of our neighborhood children want to staff it. I also found out that Oakland may or may not have codes on beekeeping, it all depends. By the reaction of the man helping us who seemed philosophically opposed to growing food and having chicken and bees in a backyard, it seemed a good idea to wait to vet things further. You know, let things ferment.

The afternoon I went to transfer the bees to a proper hive was sunny and warm, very lucky. I had checked the sugar water to see if they had sipped any or if the pollen patty had been munched. It appeared a couple of bees had fallen in the sugar water. What was meant to be a loving gesture of nourishment turned out to be a death trap. Typical. It also appeared that ants have located the patty. I had not slept. I was worrying about how I was going to pull this off. The only sliver of comfort afforded to me were the reassuring words of the pregnant lady at Beekind. She pointed out the fact that my new bees are a wild swarm. They obviously know how to take care of themselves. They have survived this long. A very good point she made.
 
I was on high alert for the UPS truck. Every utility vehicle that rounded our busy corner made me look up to check. I never realized how many Brinks, FedEx and landscaping vehicles pass by us. I reread the parts of my bee book that explain how to properly handle bees; how to transfer bees; how to remain calm. The bee book says bees don’t like sweaty human smells and not overly clean synthetic scent smells. Oookay. I thought through how to time things so I could strike the balance of not sweaty but not too clean either. I also made a gallon of sugar water in advance so it could cool. I don’t know if I am allergic to bee stings and if it hasn’t been made clear, I was horribly unprepared for these bees. So naturally I had no Epipen. Between noon and three I expected UPS to deliver my veil and a smoker. I was hoping they’d included a spine in there as well.
 
I gathered the veil, smoker, dish gloves and white hoodie in a box feeling like a small but organized child with a plan. I used pine needles to light the smoker and watched thick smoke billow out immediately realizing neighbors will likely think there is a fire. I tried walking around to keep the smoke puffs dissipating or at least moving around so it would not look like a stationary thing on fire. I am not so sure it is better to think something that can run back and forth is leaving trails of smoke in its wake. In the moment it made sense. Not more than five minutes later I heard a helicopter and thought “No way! Do they circle our neighborhood looking for news?” Scared of attracting attention, I ran to the BBQ pit and held the cover in one hand and placed the smoker on the grill to make myself appear an amateur outdoor cook. This turned out to be safe spot to leave the smoker while I suited up.
 
It had not truly occurred to me how populated and visible of an area I live in until I put the white hoodie, gardener’s hat, gloves and beekeepers veil on. At a distance, I appear to be either handling toxic materials or pretending to be the Julianne Moore character “Carol” from the movie Safe. I was highly visible from three side of my yard.
 
Between getting things in place, freaking out about my visibility, the amount of smoke pouring out the smoker and anxiety about my first experience of handling bees, I started to sweat. Thinking of how sweat can provoke bees, I started to sweat some more. Nonetheless, I would not be stopped. Smoker in hand I embarked. I started to removed the top of the nuc box. It felt stuck in place so I had to jostle it a bit which made the bees started funneling around me. Then I realized the lid was screwed shut and I had no screwdriver. A few obscenities later, sweat now dripping and screwdriver in hand, I removed the lid. Claudio had said there were five frames. I am never sure if I know what he is talking about. Portuguese is his first language and his concepts sometimes seem like he is translating back and forth in his head losing pieces of his thoughts along the way. There were only three frames. Two of which were fused together so I lifted the one free frame and placed it in the hive. Then smoked the box some more and noticed my smoker was going out. I lifted the two heavily buzzing fused frames and placed these in the hive. With my smoker going out I wasn’t going to spend much time “getting to know” my bees. I did not examine the frames. I just lifted the nuc box and dumped the remaining bees into the hive along with some unidentifiable insect debris.
 
I placed the pollen patty on top of the frames, the feeder and cover on top of that, and lightly shoved the hive over to the exact place the nuc box had been. Apparently bees can easily get disoriented if you move their hive. My smoker was out and I was done for the day. No stings. This was a great start in my opinion.

Within my second year of growing food one of the common themes that kept coming up was of course, pollination. I tend my gardens without chemicals. That means no synthetic fertilizers and certainly no pesticides. I have been using many different techniques to ensure a well fed and abundant crop. I read that bees pollinate one third of the worlds crops. My mind reels at that fact. I also read about gardeners renting hives to boost their crop production. This piqued my interest in beekeeping, well that and the fresh harvest of honey. I suppose I could have entertained the notion of renting a beehive, but that’s not how I roll.
 
Since this initial interest with beekeeping, I have read books, spoken to beekeepers and attended bee club meetings about the different hive set ups for keeping bees. As my beekeeping friends Lawrence and Timur pointed out, there are as many ways to keep bees as there are people. Apparently, many people have their special way and they swear by it but one has to decide what works best for themselves.
 
While I wanted bees I wasn’t sure how ready I was and I’ve needed things to settle down after establishing the chicken coop, yeah, we have chickens too. Dipak adjusts well but he needs time to get used to each new element of my project. By now he likes, maybe even loves, the chickens.
 
So about three weeks ago a friend of mine, Claudio, whose business provides permaculture landscaping called me up to tell me he had just captured a swarm. He had them in what is called a nuc box (a wood box that can hold up to five Langstroth frames, a few screened holes for ventilation and a main hole for entering and exiting that can be blocked off for transport). My friend wanted to know if I wanted the bees. “Yes! Of course, I have wanted to try my hand at beekeeping for years. No way! I can’t. I don’t even have any equipment and Dipak has not been primed.”
 
Incidentally, I looked up the meaning of the word “prime.” Among the eight listed meanings was the transitive verb form of prime meaning “to provide somebody with large quantities of alcohol in order to prepare him or her for doing something.” I love it when there is a word to describe the exact idea I mean to convey.
 
So Claudio, dropped off a nuc box with bees a week ago. I had no proper hive, no tools, no veil. Just a good spot in the yard and a promise of pollen laden plants. Claudio and I opened the box to release the bees. Only a few larger bees came out, scouts, that started making large circles through my yard and my neighbors yard.
 
Dipak and I made a rush for Beekind in Sebastopol for a hive and veil at a minimum (they are a great place!). When we returned home several hours later, the bees were buzzing a lot outside of the box and I feared they were readying themselves to swarm. This was when I realized we had left our veil at the store. The bees had no food. I didn’t have a feeder and as mentioned, no veil, and no smoker. All I could do was paint the hive with a natural sealant called Soy Guard. I’ve bought this stuff before for sealing outdoor items at Urban Sprouts. Each time I’ve gone to get it at EcoHome the guys there tell me the owner of Soy Guard drinks it in front of customers to demonstrate how nontoxic it is. It may be “nontoxic” but the idea of drinking it makes me feel confused inside.
 
About prepping the hive, one is supposed to paint the outer parts of a hive with latex paint but I did not want to paint the wood. I was hoping this sealant would not only last a good long while but also be harmless enough to dry in 24 hours and not be bad for my new bees.
 
I placed a small tray of sugar water with lavender stems in it next to the hive as well as a small piece of pollen and waited to see what would happen. I’d heard about putting the lavender stems from another beekeeper. I think the stems were supposed to support the weight of the bees so they would not drown while sipping the sweet water, or maybe the scent attracts them to the water. Not sure on that but we shall see.

It should be said that whence ye doth stand on the upturned tines of a garden rake, ye doth get viciously cracked over your head.

No, Seriously.