Ed and I have been working on the soil in our little courtyard. As you know, downtown New Orleans suffers from contaminated ground soil from the flooding in Hurricane Katrina. The river delta does provide the richest of growing mediums as you can see from our banana palms, elephant ears and the white blooming Angel Trumpet.  But for edibles, one must use other soil to avoid heavy metals in the ground.

We had gorgeous organic food gardens in Pensacola, taking up large sections of the yard. But alas, we are not there enough to take care of them. So we focus on our little Bywater garden. We bring truckloads of organic compost that we have made in Florida;  buckets of horse manure  as well. We use a plastic kid wagon to haul all this dirt down our very narrow isle way from the sidewalk to the back yard. Believe me, it is a grueling process.  It is on these days that Ed wonders why I am his girlfriend.  But, two years of this effort is paying off.

We now have three full plots of edible garden greens, celery, cabbage, mustard, kale, onions and many winter herbs like sage and chives. Of course the weather here is a little warmer in the winter than Pensacola, and this gives us more options in terms of plants. Almost every evening we can pick a small salad with dark greens. And the joy of eating food we grow is wonderful. I want to encourage the world to garden more.

From these photos you can see our little Meyers lemon tree and Key lime tree. Big rosemary plants have homes too. These are growing in giant pots also full of organic soil. We shop for all our plants at Harold’s Garden Center on St. Claude and Press. It is the most beautiful, artistic and well loved garden center. All the Bywater stars shop there. We saw Jessica Lange there last month.  And she saw A. E. Barnes. It was way cool. Keep up with the dirt. We do it for love!