Spring Salad from the Sidewalk

Seattle is a city of gardeners.

For all the weekends and vacations I’ve spent in this city, it’s only since I’ve been living here that I've noticed the gardening. The first non-rainy weekend this spring it seemed as if my entire neighborhood was out gardening. Garbage day that week found bags of yard waste lining the curb. I began to feel left out because I wasn’t out there myself—digging in the dirt, mowing, weeding, and pruning.

Part of this has to do with the way this city is laid out. In the residential neighborhoods houses are set back from the street, with a bit of lawn or yard in front of it. In most San Francisco neighborhoods the houses butt up against the sidewalks and against each other. There are back yards but you never see them—I didn’t know they existed until I moved into the city myself. An aerial view of my San Francisco neighborhood shows that the blocks are hollow, buildings line the street but there’s a strip of green in the middle. Each house hides their yard away, out of sight.

But in Seattle—as in Portland and other Northwestern cities—yards are shared, flaunted, taken care of. Most blocks are bisected by an alleyway, so that even driveways and garages and garbage cans are hidden from view. The backyards may be small, but the front yards are filled with lush green lawns, blooming flowers, bushes, and trees. It makes neighborhood walks a sheer pleasure. I’ve never felt so much as if I were living in a park.

And it’s not just lawn and flowers that people are growing in their yards—they’re growing food as well.

I first noticed the sidewalk vegetable gardens in Ravenna, the neighborhood where my brother and his family live. The house on the corner across the street from them, right by where I park my car when I come to visit, has a small vegetable garden. Rows of tender green lettuces, some very healthy chives, a zucchini vine (or is it a pumpkin?). How sweet, I thought. Even in this tiny bit of space they’ve made a little vegetable garden.



The lettuces look divine—all this in a small strip of dirt that would otherwise be an unusable bit of lawn.



But the house across the street is only the tip of the iceberg. In walks around Ravenna, with my niece in her stroller, we’ve discovered many such gardens. Some people have even taken over the strip of dirt that runs between the sidewalk and the street, commandeered it for their own vegetable growing purposes. Some of them just dig up the strip of dirt or lawn and have at it, others have built raised beds (which makes sense when you think about the dog traffic).



Some have more elaborate systems—like these arty, custom designed containers with built-in irrigation system (anyone guess what that feathery green plant is in the planter to the left? Answer in the comments. There's another view here). When I stopped to take a picture, a friendly neighbor struck up a conversation with me, telling me that the planters were covered in copper sheeting, which keep the snails and slugs out (they don’t like copper), and they cost $200 each.



Even if you don’t have a bit of yard or a sidewalk strip, there are still opportunities in Seattle to grow a wee garden. A city program called P-Patches gives aspiring gardeners a plot in a community organic garden. There are 6,000 plots available in 70 gardens throughout the city—yet there are so many eager gardeners in this city there’s a 700 person waiting list (certain plots are more sought after than others; some don’t have any wait at all). Some of the gardens are devoted to a youth program that teaches kids gardening, cooking, and nutrition (to be fair, San Francisco has a community garden program as well, but it’s much smaller and not as active).

There’s a P-Patch near my house and I love walking by it. This is a boon on all levels, fresh, organic, local produce, good use of land that would otherwise lie empty—and each year the P-Patch gardeners donate seven to ten tons of produce to local food banks.

How lovely, even here in the city, to be able to grow a bit of your own food. And how nice for my brother and family, for his neighbor is a generous guy. When I dropped off a dinner I had made for them the other night I brought a head of lettuce for salad in case they didn’t have any on hand (they are well stocked with Yo-baby yogurt, Cherios, and strained peas, but sometimes grownup food is in short supply).

“Oh, we don’t need that,” my brother said. “Mike gives us lettuce from his little garden. Have you seen it there, across the street?”

Is this a nice city or what?



SPRING SALAD

I don’t have a sidewalk plot or a P-Patch, and I’ve not been here long enough for the small back slope behind the house, where I am attempting to garden, to have produced much. But I do have potted herbs in my kitchen. And I do have a farmers’ market. For those of us without a wee small garden, it’s the next best thing.

This dish was inspired by a beautiful salad made by Jennifer Jeffrey, whom I had the good fortune to have lunch with this spring. She arranged tender leaves of lettuce that served as wraps for ingredients that were scattered inside. It was so visually appealing that I couldn’t help improvise my own version (Jennifer has a wonderful sense of art, you should check out her small photo gallery). This one has radishes, peas, walnuts, goat cheese, thin strips of lemon zest, and chives from my own kitchen herb pots. It’s filling enough to be its own light lunch.

One small head of butter/bibb lettuce
3 radishes, sliced thinly
large handful of fresh peas (about half a cup)
1/4 cup walnut pieces
1/4 cup goat cheese
3-4 strips of lemon zest
fresh chives

Dressing:
Whisk together some olive oil and golden balsamic vinegar and drizzle over the top (I like this brand). I was recently introduced to golden balsamic and I love it—lighter and fresher than red balsamic, which seems syrupy and overwhelming by comparison. Try some and I bet you won’t want to go back (if you don’t have golden balsamic, some lemon juice and olive oil would do fine as well). Salt and pepper to taste.