Grandpa's Garden, Pt. 1

Grandpa's Garden: One Little Piggy
Originally uploaded by ajkinik.

We live on the 3rd floor of a building above 3 generations of a Portuguese family, the elders of which are our landlords. We've been like part of the family pretty much since the day we moved in. This arrangement has many perks, but among other things it means that "Grandma" frequently sends up homemade treats for us to eat. It also means that "Grandpa" very generously lets us have a portion of his garden to grow our annual assortment of herbs and vegetables. This is a real honor, because Grandpa is a pretty legendary gardener within the local Portuguese community. Every year his garden turns out beautifully, and every year the local Portuguese men line up to check out his garden and try and glean some secrets from him.

We started to plant the garden about a month ago. We only planted some herbs, some lettuces, and some Swiss chard. Then we got rained out for the next three weeks. This morning we were finally able to plant our tomatoes (including 3 varieties of heirloom tomatoes from the Montreal Botanical Garden's plant sale), our peppers, an eggplant, and some more herbs.

am/km