Looking back - May 31st, 2016

The day after my 26th birthday.

Jess (then fiancé, now husband) and I were saving money in a sketchy 2 bedroom apartment that cut every corner and pinched every penny. We considered ourselves lucky to have an “extra bedroom” despite the fact that the apartment was essentially eroding around us and police roved the complex nightly. We had no outdoor space or parking spots, just a two foot strip of gravel next to the front (only) door - and all I wanted was a garden.

My 26th birthday present from Jess was a hose and bucket that hooked easily into our kitchen faucet for watering the storage bins I had spray-painted green and planted up with potatoes, tomatoes, salad greens, herbs, and other miscellaneous garden plants that never sprouted. These bins eventually broke, most of what I planted never grew, and still it fed something in me to the point where I felt I was no longer starving.

Eventually we got our finances in order enough to apply for a home loan, and bought the second of two options we had within an hour of our jobs. Today I work from home and my garden is the size of a tennis court. I have dedicated greenhouse the square footage of those two gravel strips that I now use to start seeds year round. It took us five years of success, failure, blood, sweat, tears, and stress to plant my dream, and we let others shrivel up and die to keep nurturing this one, and it still keeps me up at night.

What I’ve learned over the last few years is that some seeds will grow, some won’t, but the one ones that keep finding their way up through the cracks are the ones that feed you no matter where you are along your journey, and that is worth remembering.