The Premise

In 2007, my boyfriend was finally ready to commit. How did I know? We had just started house hunting and accidentally chanced upon a house that he loved. "I think we should buy it," he said. When I saw him write the check for earnest money, I knew he was ready. Finally! The man I loved wanted to start a life with me! The house was great - not too big (the smallest one on a very nice block), not too broken (or so we thought), charming, 1920's. Three stories, counting the finished basement, a small footprint and just enough square footage that we'd have no excuse to upsize if we had kids. There's only one down side: the garden is tiny. Most of the back yard is consumed by the garage, the studio on top of the garage, and a brick patio. The lot is narrow and overbuilt. It feels like a house in New York, not a small midwestern city. But it seemed a small thing to overlook, even though I had been stubbornly container gardening throughout my apartment and condo days . . .

In the spring of 2008, I read "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver, mostly at the kitchen table. The book is an account of Barbara's family's resolve to eat only local food for one year, growing as much as it themselves as possible. I alternately recited passages aloud to my now-husband and silently clutched twined palms to my breast. Yes! This is why I had been sowing Swiss chard seeds in patio pots across the city. Yes! This is why I had learned to make and can jam. It was meant to be: I was meant to follow in Barbara's footsteps and live off the land, my own land, the land of local friendly farmers, to put up rows of gleaming jars of tomatoes, to dig through the deep freeze all winter long. I was ready to become Marilla Cuthbert with plum preserves at the ready.

My mother had just purchased a 44-acre farm 70 minutes outside of the city. I zealously planted, mapped, and planted that spring. I did not stop or think or research. I drove back and forth to Mom's new acreage, never counting the gas I was guzzling, and dug and planted and sweated and grinned. We put 100 heirloom pepper plants in the garden and the next morning Mom called: a rabbit bit every last pepper at the ground. They were all dead. We put 100 heirloom tomatoes in the garden, failed to stake them, and suffered through a September of rotten stinkbombs. We put rows and rows of heirloom potatoes in the garden and didn't weed - the potatoes flat out disappeared. We didn't till or compost or irrigate, although eventually we did get a 7-foot, chicken-wire-reinforced fence up.

So a commuter garden is not for me. I hate to drive, and inevitably neglected everything I put in Mom's ground. I think it has to be here, in the city, in my tiny lot. I think I have to move my perennials and that gorgeous flagstone path my husband gave me for my birthday two years ago. But this time I'm going slow and steady. I hope you're ready for a long and gradual story.