Story submitted by Sierra Downey
“When I moved back in with my parents due to the pandemic, I wanted to do the best I could to make a positive impact on the household through this time of great change. I helped cook, clean, organise, and build systems that would work for us—but most pivotally, I asked my family about growing some of our own food again! Dad, a former landscaper who finally has the “backyard of his dreams,” was a little hesitant, probably haunted by the ghost of overgrown zucchini plants past, but generously gave me reign of the side yard nonetheless. So after consulting some more established food forest tenders, we’ve started a wee container garden with 20-quart buckets and plant starts from friends.
We began small, with tomato, cucumber, and zucchini (Sorry, Dad!), but the bucket garden has quickly become a gathering place, a space of joy for the whole family. Mum, a chef and a bit of an herbalist, is in her element, and our conversations now include more of her childhood memories of foraging in the Maritimes and harvesting wild berries to make wine with her grandmother. Every story has some new lesson about the green world, and I am grateful. We’ve now added spinach, onions, beets, and kale to the mix, and I just walked out the other day to find Dad and brother very proudly placing a Santa Rosa plum tree and two cherry trees in their new home. I am grateful to this tiny side yard for already providing us wee dinner greens but even more so for bringing my family together over an excitement for the gifts of the soil. The best resilience garden moment for me has been when, after seeding an egg carton filled with soil to make sprouts, my typically-unenthused-by-the-outdoors brother turned to me and said: “You know, I like my hands in soil. I want to do this more often.”
