A new project!

It seems that I have trouble blogging without some sort of project to write about.

While the project technically started a few days ago, it was this morning, while I was lying in bed admiring my fledgling tomato and cucumber plants that I realised I should blog about it.

As you may have already guessed, it involves gardening. Some of you who know me may be scratching your heads. Yes, I do live in an apartment, and no, other than the juniper we transplanted to the corner of the patio of our last townhouse and a few annuals that died from lack of love (and water), I have never gardened.

Not that there wasn't a green gene in the family. I remember on dark, cold winter nights my mom would pore over seed catalogues, with her pencil crayons nearby to add to her colour-coded maps of our yards. I would point out some beautiful flower I wanted her to buy, inevitably in the wrong "zone" so it would never survive in Calgary, which never seemed to support the flowers I liked. We also had a vegetable patch, with military rows of lettuce, asparagus, carrots, potatoes, peas, beans and zucchini (oh, what an abundance of zucchini! We would be eating frozen zucchini cake and loaf until December!) as well as sweet, luscious strawberries and raspberries, just waiting to be popped in our mouths, fresh off the plant.

Luckily for my fledgling attempts at gardening, our apartment seems well set up for it, with a fairly large south-facing balcony. Earlier this week I purchased some seed trays and seeds (cucumber, lettuce, pea, bean, and a a variety of herbs), as well as a fledgling tomato plant (I always hear tomatoes are difficult so I didn't want to try them from seed). I haven't killed anything in the four days they have been in the house -- in fact the cucumbers are gigantic (by seedling standards) and the lettuce is poking its tiny green pinheads out of the soil.

My plan is that, by starting them early and leaving them out during the day and bringing them in if it frosts, I will be able to start a second batch it I manage to kill these ones before they reach maturity!

I'm already thinking how tasty a salad will be with home-grown vegetables!