The Past part 1: Kagel Canyon as Ground Zero

In November 2008, I moved to Sylmar California. For the past 10 years I had been living right in Hollywood dabbling in acting and music. The city life became wearisome. I had been raised mostly on a small family farm and was a nature boy at heart. I had to move because the building I was living in was bought out and slated for renovations. I had been jonesing to get out of the city but my rent was cheap and I was trying to save for...who knows what.

When I saw the log cabin advertised with a large front and backyard plus a year round stream going through the back, I couldn't believe my luck. It was a little more than I wanted to pay for rent, but as I scoured the rental ads for several weeks nervous I would lose it, I couldn't find anything even remotely as unique or suitable; within an appropriate economic range, that is.

It had only been a month since my revelation of "Livinghearth." I had a lot to learn. I moved in and really started to take stock of the grounds. It was going to be a difficult start. First, the soil in the front was hard compacted, nearly impervious to a shovel and full of pea gravel from what I am guessing are several construction jobs over the years (the area had been developed over 100 years ago.) The backyard on the other hand, was receded river bank with a sloping terrace. This soil started out compacted and hard and then abruptly turned into loose and very sandy. Sandy to the point that I could jam my had through a thin layer of crustiness and scoop up shallow handful of grey sand. On top of the whole matter, the area of the canyon I am living in is heavily shaded with oaks and sycamore trees well over 50 feet tall. Since it was November when I moved in, there was virtually no green, save the oak trees.

I stewed for weeks. I didn't even know where to begin. The yards hadn't been kept up for a while so I decided first I would just get all the leaves raked up, mulch them in the chipper and get a compost started. So this I did. It took a good 6-7 hours to get many piles together around the property. This at least afforded me a close look at the whole yard to see what was really going on underneath the heavy blanket of dead foliage and get the imagination geared up. As for the compost; I like to do things 'by the book' first and really understand the fundamentals so it may sound silly but nevertheless, I went and purchased a book on compost. I confess even this seemingly simple project came across a bit overwhelming in book form.

What was clearly obivious at first was that I had an abundance of carbon material. After a couple afternoons of mulching, I assigned an area in the yard as the compost pile and started adding all my kitchen scraps.

Clearly, this was going to take a while. In the meantime, I started ruminating on ideas.