Every spring when it gets really hard to keep my mind focused on the monitor screen my heart wanders outside – with any luck my brain also follows so that I don’t  hurt myself with the tools.   I want to rake up the last of the Fall’s dead leaves.  Heck – I’m happy to pick up garbage – anything to get back outside in the sun.  And it’s not just the sun or the warmth or the birds or the fresh air.  I’m a gardener and I love to make things grow.  It’s what makes me the happiest.  But I’m still living in a rental and after designing, planting and paying for gardens for one too many previous landlords I’m looking at a blank backyard with mixed feelings.  Because you see I buy. I plant. I feed, weed and nurture. They grow.  I move. They die.  I hurt.

This year I’ve solved the problem in two unique ways.  The first is that this is the year I’m starting up my outdoor bonsai nursery and in a few weeks the  first seventy two-year seedlings will arrive.  So, I’ll dig out a semi-bed, pot most of them up and hold them in the bed in pots for the next three years until I move again- maybe – finally- to somewhere permanent.  A few will go into the ground to help out with the landscaping and once again leave the mark that Lorraine Was Here.  The Trident Maples, left to grow to their natural size should have a good chance of surviving the next tenants.

And what really gets me excited is that this year I’m once again turning my hand to the fine art of vegetable gardening, but in a new way.  I’m going to be setting up some hydroponic vegetable gardens in order to find the best configurations to use as small-space, urban container gardens.  I’m going to be comparing some gravity fed designs and pumped designs, measuring yields and finding a way to make the whole nutrient additive process easier to understand for the average non-gardener.

I wondered at first why more people weren’t looking more seriously at the hydroponic urban option, until I started really looking into it and saw the apparent complexity of the existing presentations.  My task is to test, simplify and roll it out at an affordable cost.  This is an idea whose time has come.  It’s local, it’s green, it’s affordable food for urban residents.