A plot of ground is prepared for the "guerilla" garden out the back of my apartment building. This patch of earth is screened from a nearby bicycle path by a small tree; thus, no passersby will likely see anything (and therefore will hopefully not steal my precious produce). I'll be planting pumpkins and tomatoes.

Now the chickenses are applied--liberally. They shelter under their traveling cage contraption. My chickened friend brought them over to work the soil and give them a change of scenery.

Merciless are the fowl. They scratch and peck and root around. And poop. Lots of rich poop for the garden.

Action chicken.

This is my herb garden at the front of our building on a bright, sunny Spring day. There's a mint plant beside the blue garbage container, some small basil plants up near the top of the strip, and alternating examples of sage, thyme, oregano, summer savory, and rosemary. This last plant will grow into a suffocating behemoth in the climate of the Bay Area. It's a perfect rosemary growing region.

The guerilla garden. You can see our sundeck at the upper right, the usually grafitti-festooned wooden fence, and the ubiquitous fennel plants. Fennel loves this area. Anywhere you dig you will find fennel root. Fennel fennel fennel. Anyway, the sticks leaning against the wood wall are for the morning glories to climb. You can see the two patches of earth that will one day host my gurerilla pumpkins and guerilla tomatoes. The ground is strew with dried fennel stems (he said it again!).

The guerilla garden--a closer look. Now you can see the pumpkin sprouts in the patch of earth in the upper left corner, and the four tomato plants at bottom. The black pots hold morning glory sprouts. I won't keep you in supense: the garden bombed. I managed to get only one "useable" pumpkin out if it, plus half a dozen stunted tomatoes. The soil is very sticky and clayey, and will need lots of amendment next year.

The morning glories on our sundeck are in full swing. Note the two different varieties by their blooms. Aphids had a field day on the plant on the left. The plants quite happily climbed up the fence-lattice that I had provided, but I had to pull it all down at the end of the summer so that my landlady could repaint the building.