As a child growing up in Edmonton, gardening was a bit of a mixed bag. Part chore, part summer boredom relief, I never really got into it the way my sister did. It could have been my mom’s haphazard gardening philosophy, but more likely it was my decision to live in an apartment after fleeing the parental nest.
Apartment balcony gardening wasn’t really high on my list of priorities while I was in university. Working nearly full time hours to pay for school barely allowed for college fun time let alone time to think about a garden. And really, let’s be honest, between school, work and excessive alcohol consumption, it never really crossed my mind. I bought a planter one year thinking that I’d spend mornings on my balcony drinking coffee and tending my flowers. Oh, the naïveté of youth. I think the planter lasted a month. I barely spent enough time at home to open the balcony door.
Thankfully, times have changed. Maybe it’s a bit of growing up but for the last couple of years I’ve been feeling the itch to flex my green thumb. There have been a couple of terrible attempts at patio tomatoes and a mini pumpkin patch that yielded one baseball sized fruit. Pretty solid fails. However, the itch has become increasingly itchy with all of attention being given to local food and the potential for economic savings. Gardening, it seems, is cool these days and I just can’t resist.
This year I’m taking the jump. After some careful encouragement and a timely dose of bad/good luck, I got a plot in the city’s Community Garden. (Why the bad/good luck? You see, I’m supposed to be on holidays in Nova Scotia right now but thanks to the never ending work in the good ole Alberta oil patch, my one true love and travel companion was called back to work and the vacay was cancelled. But at least I have time to garden, right?)
So, seeds and borrowed tools in hand, I went off to plant my garden. I survived the mosquitoes (only 15 new bites!) and the garden is in!
Here’s the run-down: 1 hill of pumpkins, 1 hill of squash, 3 mini bell peppers (I’m planting from seed), a row of sugar peas, a row of beans, a row of carrots, a row of onions, a half row of spinach and 3 tomato plants.
