A blessing in your front yard

The first thing that comes to my mind when I am writing this blog is that it is a blessing that we can survive this life-changing year, and we are now ready to welcome a new year. The world’s phenomenon that happened in around the beginning of the 2020 year has totally wiped away presumption of ‘normal’ in everybody’s life. We are forced to live in a new lifestyle, which because of it, could be actually decreased our problem.

Kids visiting the Green House in the evening after the lockdown. They always shouts “good moning, miss!” even though it is evening.

Environmentally speaking, a research conducted by Kumari and Toshniwal (2020) based on the observation of air quality in some cities across the globe showed that during the lockdown period, there is a reduction in the air pollutant. It is possible because of the force of not using their private transportation to go places. Being locked inside the house actually also gives ourselves time to do something that we usually too busy to do, such as cooking.

In our Green House of Cipaganti, aside from in pausing some of the work schedules, the lockdown doesn’t seem to bother with our daily life. Thanks to our beloved front yard, which acting as a place to do 101 things: Nature Club, motorbike parking, sports (ping-pong, badminton, and so on), hanging out, weather station, Miskin’s afternoon nap, playing the guitar, and all the things that could be done in the back yard from the first time that LFP move to this house until this moment.

Nature Club is held in the Green House as the school is closed due to pandemic. In this picture we just started our Civet conservation curriculum, and that day we have a painting class together after learning some ecology of Javan civets.

One activity that people often do when they were in the front yard is gardening. We have a small corner in our front yard, which allocated for the garden space. Whatever plants lived there, is usually comes from the house member’s decision, what vegetables they wanted to eat. The plants’ composition is also dynamic depends on the life cycle, season, seed availability, but mostly due to the moods and needs of ingredients.

Our little garden in the front yard of Green House

Gardening is not always about the feeling of harvesting free food, but also a recreation activity every time you feel stressed about life.

These are some vegetables we could pick up from our garden. We used to have fresh tomatoes, but it only lives once, and now we are planning to change it with another plants. At the moment, we have eggplants, chili, and spring onion.

These years, having urban greenery in the house has become a trend in Indonesia. Many of the small families in Jakarta and other metropolitan area are beginning to introduce a green space into their house or apartment. People say, having a green corner in the home is always bring some positive energy. And turns out it is true.

This is the weather station. It is located on the corner of the garden, you won’t easily find it if you don’t look closely. We still collects data until now.

There is a calm and relaxing sensation within gardening, started from selecting what kind of plants we wanted to plant, picking the organic materials for the plant’s care, arranging the order so then they can get enough sunshine, watering the plants every day, and finally watching them grow and green. Next happy time is when the flowers eventually transformed into fruit, and it means a fresh free food for us! As we plant the plants ourselves, choose the organic materials for our plants, there is a special satisfaction whenever we cook or eat something we harvested from our garden because we practice such simple sustainable farming.

Daily visitor, natural pollinator for our Red Kaliandra in the front yard.

So yes, it can be said that the green space in our front yard has sustained our life in a way that sometimes we did not realize. The garden in the front yard has become a part of the Green House.