She used to tell me the first crop picked would taste very different from the last. And she was right
As a child, I spent most days outside with my hands in the dirt. When I wasn’t reading, I was gardening, which seems incongruous now because I live in an apartment building and my idea of keeping plants alive extends only to those in pots. And even then, I struggle. But as a kid, I watched my parents commit to regenerating their quarter acre block with plants native to the area, slowly encircling our house in bush. And with the growth of the gum trees and the bottlebrush and the wattle came the echidnas, the blue-tongue lizards and the birds. So many birds.
And while I loved having my hands in the dirt, I wasn’t interested in growing trees. I wanted to crowd the earth with vegetables and flowers that I could look after. With my dad’s help, we converted a strip of paving at the sunny end of the house, removing the bricks and covering the ground with rich, dark soil. I planted pansies and daises, sweet peas, broad beans, carrots and beetroot, staking those that needed somewhere to climb and tying up their fragile stems with strips of nylon stockings.
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