Growing up in New York, my main exposure to gardening was being told to weed the back driveway at Grandma’s place (and the above from Candide, but that got me hooked on Bernstein instead). As you might expect, the weeding didn’t do much to hook me. I did like Grandma’s rose bushes, but then one year they pulled them all out to plant tomatoes instead, and I pretty much lost interest in the whole thing.
Fast forward past years of apartment living in various rentals, and I’m finally in a place of my own with an actual patio. And finally I’m starting to understand why my grandparents (and now my parents) spent so many hours out in the garden.
It’s fun!
Best thing about having a patio instead of a backyard is that you get the fun parts of gardening — choosing and nurturing pretty and/or tasty plants — without the weeding and lawn care that I still find utterly uninteresting.
Since I’ve never done any of this before, this year is pretty much one big experiment. So far we’ve planted four different herbs, two kinds of impatients, three tomato plants, and some Spanish lavender. We don’t get full sun all day on the patio, so whether we actually get enough direct sunlight to keep them all thriving I don’t know yet. Everything seems to be growing and thriving so far – we even have 5 or 6 green tomatoes forming on the vine – but I’m not going to call this year a success unless we actually harvest some tomatoes and the rest of the plants stay alive.
Four scraggly pink rose bushes also came with the place. I’ve still got a lot to learn about caring for them, but they’re blooming like crazy right now, and I just LOVE being able to pick my own roses and put them into a vase at my table.
I guess it really is different when you own a place.
