Our large apartment complex provides a limited number of garden plots during the summer to residents. We reserved one two summers ago, and the results were kind of sad. Most of our vegetables got pilfered–someone actually uprooted all of our broccoli–and a slug got to our radishes and ate them from the inside. Generally, we failed to maintain it enough, so it always had mad weeds.
Our total harvest when all was said and done was two inedibly hot radishes that survived the slug assault, and one nice red-yellow tomato that my one-year-old son threw on the concrete and smashed. I picked it up and ate it anyways, because I wasn’t going to have my whole harvest wasted. It was delicious. But it was also really sad.
Last summer we lived in New York City while I did an internship at a law firm, but this summer we will be staying in Maryland while I study for and take the bar exam. We won’t be moving to Chicago (where I have been hired by a law firm) until December–the bad economy is forcing a lot of law firms to defer start dates for first year associates–so we’ll be around. And I am thinking about gardening again.
As great as it would be to grow some vegetables and give it another try, I think that won’t really be prudent. I have no desire to work even harder only to have my harvest stolen. I have given some thoughts to growing an herb garden, though. I really like cooking with fresh herbs (it doesn’t help that all of ours are a bajillion years old and probably have long lost all of their savor), but buying fresh herbs is expensive, wasteful, and a pain in the ass. So a kitchen garden has a lot of appeal. Maybe since my bar class is in the afternoon, we can make a morning routine of taking the kids out to tend the patch.
There’s no real reason we couldn’t grow herbs inside. We get plenty of sun through our window. But historically that has not turned out really well. We forget to water them, and they die. and they come with aphids and stuff, and look all icky, and they are no fun to use.
I realize that my dream of being a farmer is probably a long way off if I can’t manage to keep herbs alive in my living room. Small steps for Kullervo.
Sailing to Byzantium 