March 7, 2025
Music to Your Ears: Meals, Enjoyable, Household
On a misty, chilly November morning, we discovered pleasure.
It was early once we headed out to fulfill musicians and home-schoolers Lisa and Shane Lamb who develop their backyard targets one weekend at a time. Fruit timber and vegetable beds be a part of native vegetation and wildlife habitat, together with a pond bordered by perennials for pollinators and birds. Heads up: you may see it in particular person on the Austin Society Pond 2025 Tour in June!
When Lisa and Shane purchased their home in 2013, they began planting fruit timber and laying out beds. “The principle targets in our yard are rising meals for ourselves, but additionally sort of making a wildlife habitat,” Lisa instructed us. To draw much more animals with water, they labored with Hill Nation Water Gardens and Nursery to construct a pond in 2021.
Their youngsters Jay and Ella love their massive yard the place on a regular basis’s a nature tour of discovery proper at house. “I feel being outdoors simply conjures up creativity. They’ve some fairy homes they’ve been constructing. They’ve received one other fort that they’ve within the again,” Shane stated.
Because it received extra drizzly and shivery, we actually simply wished to twist up with them to learn a ebook. Enchanted with our storytime, we realized loads about edible grasses in Shanleya’s Quest! 
However first, we have been handled to mini-concerts. As raindrops plopped onto the roof, we fell underneath the spell of Lisa’s harp. Knowledgeable harpist, flutist, and composer who additionally teaches, she has carried out as Principal Harpist with the Austin Civic Orchestra since 2010. Lisa’s carried out with the Austin Symphony, Musicians of the San Antonio Symphony, Austin Opera, Conspirare and lots of extra.
“I’d say with music as musicians, we’re all the time making one thing that’s ephemeral. It doesn’t final except you’re doing a recording. So it’s sort of good having the backyard. It’s one thing visible which you could see and is extra everlasting, although it’s all the time shifting,” she stated.
Shane’s a composer who teaches piano classes, music concept, and composition. They each educate at house in numerous studios, so dad and mom usually drop off youngsters to be taught from each of them. “Within the backyard I usually have music in my head. I compose music, so I’m usually sort of brainstorming new concepts or taking part in round with concepts as I do my work,” he stated.
Lisa loves educating youngsters, together with her personal daughter, already composing music of her personal.
Jay performed harp for us, however he additionally composes for piano along with his dad. Take a look at Shane’s great YouTube channel to observe the household play.
Jay and Ella additionally know their vegetation: greenhouse tropicals, raised mattress greens, and wild vegetation to forage. Shane’s a member of the Fb group, Texas Fruiting Plant Growers.
“I simply additionally like seeing what the vegetation seem like. I’m all the time curious, like, what does a lychee plant seem like? So I plant the seed after which it grows and I see it, and it’s a good looking plant and it’s received these good leaves,” Shane stated. “Quite a lot of it, we simply go to the Asian shops and purchase attention-grabbing issues and plant the seeds,” Lisa added.
Their property sits on limestone, so that they develop greens in raised beds. Free yard bonus: cool climate chickweed for his or her favourite pesto. The children confirmed, “It’s so yummy!”
I’d by no means heard of achira (Canna edulis), however Jay and Ella might have instructed me that it’s an edible root crop. Use the leaves in stir fry, wraps, and salads, or steam meals in them as you’d with banana leaves.
With all that limestone they “personal,” they have been comfortable to have Hill Nation dig out the pond! Excavated stones border the berms that Lisa and Shane planted with pollinator favorites.
Retaining to a purple and silver colour palette, they embody salvias, pink skullcap, lavender, silver ponyfoot and woolly stemodia.
They made positive to position it for view from the kitchen desk. “It’s good watching the wildlife once we’re consuming our meals,” Lisa famous.
“After which for us once we’re outdoors, we’re not the kind of individuals to ever actually simply sit and calm down. We’re all the time working, working actively,” she stated. “Nevertheless it’s simply very nice listening to the sound of water and having that peaceable spot whereas we’re working within the backyard.”
Shane added, “It’s meditative for me. The weeding and the harvesting and caring for every thing.”
Thanks for stopping by! There’s tons extra, so watch now and listen to the music!