Beginnings

I remember exactly when I became a gardener!  Finally, we had a yard after living in an apartment for the first seven years of my life.  At about the age of eight I began to ask my mother if I could have a part of the yard and could I have money to buy some seeds.  This was not a large piece of property, just thirty feet wide, a typical city lot.  I dug out a small area towards the back and planted corn and carrots in an area around the catch basin (this was an old house which had this type of sewer to catch all of the grease from the kitchen sink).  My aunt and uncle lived upstairs (two flat) and she was my mentor gardener.  We crawled around the yard together on our knees, digging, planting and pruning.

My first harvest yeilded only about three ears of corn, but the carrots were a bumper crop, and my dad said they were the best he had ever tasted!