Gettin' dirty

Okay, there is apparently more to home ownership than clearing the driveway. We've begun to enjoy the pleasures of tilling our patch of earth which, by downtown Toronto standards, is huge (by suburban Massachusetts standards, about average).

While we did engage in some first attempts at gardening at York U and the Co-op (with some success),  the condo rental we've been living in subsequently had a strict "look, don't touch" policy when it came to landscaping. In all seriousness, to post a bird feeder required clearance by the board.

All that is behind us now, and we are free to kill whatever plants we want to. In scattershot fashion, we have planted hydrangeas, hostas, lilacs, forsythia, Rose of Sharon, pansies, a Japanese something-or-other bush, various woodland plants -- all before May 1. Seeing as how we don't really know what we're doing, most will undoubtedly die. But some will survive, and next year, we'll plant more of the survivors, and so on it goes.

Our crowning achievement thus far? Three veggie boxes, meticulously constructed by a certified engineer (thanks, Drew!) and overseen by Deanna (college archivist-come-taskmistress, who kept us going despite whines of "man, am I ever tuckered out" and "my hands hurt from hammering").

Thanks to you both! As someone who mostly sits with his head in the nebulous ether of computer-space, going out back and getting just filthy feels pretty darn good.