Not a Starving Artist

In December 2011, the Pew Research Center found that 53% of college graduates move back in with their parents. My brother Matti is one of them. Both my parent's and Matti couldn't be happier. 

My dear brother Matti is gardener/sculptor stuck in a cage fighter's body. 

To blow the obvious theory to pieces, Matti actually has a job and zero debt. He's not stuck. But my parents are cool, their house large, their cooking skills top-notch, and their backyard is a sculptor's dream-- lots of space, tools, prime access to urban resources (Matti barely drives a car), and he has carte blanche to do his permaculture experiments. 

My parents' live less than a mile away from me on ~1 acre in the heart of Oakley (a first ring suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio). It was mostly used as a soccer field for us five boys growing up, but now that would be impossible due to Matti's excavating. 

My parents' pancake flat yard and kickback goal turned three of my younger brothers into full-ride scholarship soccer players. 

Basically, every tree in Oakley belongs to my parents. But how do you grow food in full shade?

It is very painful to take an axe to any tree, but my parents have spent hundreds of dollars consulting with tree experts, trying to medicate the big oak in the southern corner of the yard back to health. Finally, my brother and dad decided to euthanize it and several other trees that have been blocking access to the sun on the southern property line. The smaller branches were mulched and bigger logs were arranged in a giant spiral, filling almost the whole yard. So, in a way, the life force of the tree is being used to feed the next generation of the growth. The circle of life, baby!

Dad and Iggy work on the spiral configuration that Matti has mapped out.

Autumn 2011, the spiral starts to take shape. But we need free topsoil!

The yard has always gotten very swampy, so Matti trenched a pseudo-French drain in the footpath of the spiral.  It leads to the corner of the yard where a pond should go. There once stood a huge mound of compost from decades of leaf raking and grass mowing and food scraps from 5 boys and all their friends. 

Matti Digs a Pond

Matti and Pablo rented a backhoe for 24 hours to dig a pond. They couldn't have picked a worse day. It was like a  monsoon for 24 hours straight. We almost scrapped the whole project since the backhoe's treads kept digging themselves deeper into the muck. We eventually thought to build a kind of "island" out of pavers, the neighbor's refuse bricks, scrap-wood, and broken slabs for the backhoe to operate on. 

It was slow to prepare, but once we set-up the island, Matti quickly mastered the controls and dug a big claw-shaped pond. I gave the backhoe a whirl, but with so little video game experience under my belt, I was quickly voted off of backhoe island. Matti dug all afternoon until finally, the flooded yard busted-in and filled the pond in a matter of minutes, deep enough for me to stand in. 

"...a pool AND a pond. The pond would be good for you though." -Ty

Matti Builds Wetlands Next

Last week Matti also rented a front loader and dug out what looks like a huge ramp toward the pond. From the colossal mound of earth from the pond and the wetlands, there was plenty of soil (and clay) to cover the spiral of logs with. 

The wetlands are adjacent to the pond. It gets worse before it gets beautiful. 

Matti has planned the wetlands to be fed from the roof of the garage and the "waste" water from the washing machine. Therefore, it will be filled with special gravel and filtering plant. 

The tomato plants are starting to explode with green fruit. 

Matti's new compost system is less work and more functional now that it's set up properly to handle different phases. On the other hand, I still swear by my "big pile of $#!X" method.  

Raspberry bushes are almost picked over for the season. By default, true to the Native American method-- one third for the animals, one third for the Earth, and one third for the humanoids. 

When's it Going to be Finished?

Rule #1 and #2 are never to ask a gardener, "When it's going to be finished?" or "Will you just call me when it's harvest time?" Matti is teaching us all to appreciate the process. With him as our leader, we are all learning about permaculture, home-ec, and just hanging and working together as a family. 

All along the way, the salads have been harvested out the yin-yang and there have been herds of wildlife, including exotic birds, dragonflies, and even deer, which some in the family are tempted to "harvest" while we wait for the potatoes, squash and fruit and nut orchard to come to caloric fruition. 

For the remainder of the year's infrastructure, Matti has also designed a greenhouse and salvaged all the necessary materials, so once he says go, we will be helping him put that up to extend the growing season. He also has planned a tree house, which I would wager will become the half-way house for my other brothers should they decide to boomerang their way back to my parents'.