Uncle Ken's garden

 Went down to Gethsemane Gardens yesterday.  Rode the Red Line down.  As we came into the open air just before Armitage I realized that I have not ridden this since early in March of 2020.  The city is always changing ad it was an exciting ride.  I exited at Bryn Mawr and walked half a mile west and I was there.  

I used to favor the little six packs in black plastic that went for a dollar or two with a tiny seedling in each cubicle.  But unfortunately they are hard to find these days so I pay three bucks a plant which is outrageous, but the plants are much larger, and it starts the garden with a bang.  I bought eight tomatoes; regular, heirloom, and cherry, and four peppers of which two unfortunately are habaneros.  I can eat jalapenos straight out of the little glass jar with nary a tear, but one bite of one tiny piece of habanero and I am crying for my mama.  Well I paid for them so I will grow them, if they can overcome the morning glories that will try to swarm them.

I shall never forget the tomatoes Mom used to grow along the fence that separated the bungalow backyard from the next one.

But after leaving home I didn't have access to open land until 1970 when I was living in a trailer in southern Illinois, and I tried to grow a sunflower but the landlord's daughter didn't take particular notice of it when mowing and that was that.

In 1975 I was back in Urbana and rented a place with a vacant lot next door.  I had a fine garden there, maybe fifteen feet by thirty feet, grew all the regular vegetables and even stuff like Brussel sprouts, kohlrabi, and okra.  It was a fine garden and I was out there every morning to inspect the troops and to pull out weeds and what not.

But then it started getting really hot, and buggy, and I figured the plants could fend for themselves, and it ended up a big weed patch by the end of summer.  The guy who owned the lot was not pleased and after three years that was the end of that.

I didn't have another garden until the spring of 93 when I put a few pots out on my new balcony.  Every year I added more until now they span the edge of the balcony, maybe thirty pots in all.

The first year I grew tomatoes but did not get much.  Maybe not enough sun I figured and did not plant them again.  I grew mostly hot peppers, which grew well, and a motley assortment of flowers.  Not a big fan of flowers.  You can't eat them.

And then one year for some reason I tried tomatoes again and they grew just fine, so maybe that first year was just a bad year.

I was always pretty tolerant of weeds, if they weren't choking out my main plant I let them lived.  One year this curious little fellow grew out of the pot, grasped a railing and started twining around it, around and around.  What manner of plant was this?  Out for a walk one day I noticed a plant just like it and following the vine I came across a flower, a morning glory flower.  Well how about that?  Each flower lasts but a day and produces a seed so there were plenty of seeds around for the next generation and the generation after that.   One year I found a fence full of pink morning glories.  I came around in the fall and harvested seeds and now they have joined my purple flowers on the balcony.  I have a friend in Texas who has a fence full of Heavenly Blues, and she has sent me seeds, but thus far they have never popped up.  I'm giving them one last chance this year and then maybe I will buy a packet of seeds from the store.

My neighbor a few doors down grew sunflowers.  Nice guy, Willy, came over to the USA from Germany just after the war and I suspect he may have been in the wrong army.  Was a waiter at The Bergoff since he came here, but one day he died and I got a hold of his tall white vases and ever since then I have been growing sunflowers with the rest of the brood. 

One year I grew eggplants and one year I grew pumpkin vines, and I can't think of what else.  Have a hankering to try corn.  Not for the ear, but just to watch them grow.

Four of five years ago my sunflowers enticed some house finches, who were fine company, and I got to buying seed for them.  Early this spring a mob of sparrows moved in and drove away the finches, but now they are gone and the finches are back,  And I have pigeons too.  I like them well enough but I know a lot of people don't, and it's against the rules to feed birds so I worry about that.  But sometimes they just look so damn hungry I toss some sunflower seeds into the bowls.

I moved here the day before Columbus Day 1992, and the next morning I leapt from bed to survey my vast balcony on my first day.  I expect my plants are waking the same way this morning and I will be going out to survey them forthwith.