Two days in a row of sunny, warm, sit-on-your-terrace-days. Ten minutes out on the terrace is like an hour of therapy. Yesterday, I sat out there in the afternoon shopping online for self-watering plant containers. I want a potted flower garden this summer. Lots of geraniums and violets and ivy hanging over the sides.
Did you know you can grow potatoes in a barrel? I could grow one hundred pounds of potatoes on my terrace on South Temple. "Come out and look at my potato garden," I could say to guests.
"You're growing potatoes out here eight stories above the street?" Amazed guests would say, jaws gawping.
"Tom and I have strong agricultural DNA," I'd say. "Before the 1940's all the grandparents came off farms except for the Roos family who were guild people in the middle ages and worked in cities: water works and such. Later electricity. Watch me turn this light on and off. It's in the blood."
Yes, that's the plan. I have two terraces actually. One for flowers and the second one for potatoes and runner beans.
We also have hunter-gatherer DNA in our combined families but that goes a lot further back.
Tom saw BAMBI as a three-year old and can't even think of killing a deer. I suppose we could corden off a room for chickens.
I have friends who live on Park Avenue in New York and they did have chickens in the study for about a year (because those Easter chicks grow into chickens). Once when my friend had a broken leg, the chickens got out of the study and she had to call her son at school and make him come home to gather them up. Later they took them to a farm.
Like I said, this summer, I'm going to have a garden on the terrace. The best thing about March is that spring is coming.
Louise, I laughed out loud at the sentences, "Watch me turn this light on and off. It's in the blood." Thanks for brightening my day.
ReplyDeleteI think we should grow beanstalks instead. I call Jack.
ReplyDeleteYes I laughed right out loud. You're so good at that. As for the potatoes in the barrel, we tried last summer here in Alberta and had beautiful plants poking out of all the old garbage cans (we now have those big black carts for our garbage you folks have down in Salt Lake. We felt so agrarian and virtuous for recycling those bins. Our yielded harvest made a lovely potato salad. Period. I think it's warmer in Utah. I used to spend March reviewing seed catalogues. I had big plans for those raised beds outside. YOu have to be a saint to garden in Alberta with early frosts and late springs. Saint Bonnie decided this year she isn't going to garden at all. I would rather look at J Crew Catalogues.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to start calling our tiny patio our terrace to make me feel better. I love semantics.
ReplyDeleteI, too, laughed out loud at the light comment. My daughter demanded to know what was so funny. She's 8. I told her. She said "well, I can do that too. See?" And then she proceeded to turn the bathroom light on and off several times.
ReplyDeleteIt's 70 in Iowa today! I won't plant my EarthBoxes for another month, but I love fresh peas and tomatoes. The scope of a container garden is perfect for me.
ReplyDeleteHere in rural Kansas, we do not have terraces, except out in the wheat fields. What we do have, as an escape from this 45-mph windy and prairie existence, is a small garden out our back door, which we call The Grotto. In the summer it holds giant banana trees, poinsettias (left over from Christmas), a pond with a fountain, full of giant goldfish, and herbs. It is surrounded by 6' tall privacy fence (to keep the wind out, not our neighbors). I go out in the mornings, in my jammies, coffee in hand, and cats by my side. We, the cats & I, bird-watch for a good 2 cups of coffee's worth of morning. In the evenings, I sit and listen to the sounds that only a bucolic environment can offer - a newborn calf, a hawk, the coyotes on the river, and the owls.
ReplyDeletePotatoes in a barrel?
I have barrels...