I started growing houseplants when I was in my early teens. It didn't take long to get hooked. Before I knew what happened, I had a whole collection of them, cluttering up every horizontal surface in my bedroom. I even had a terrarium (the lava lamp of the indoor gardening world). As the years passed, my interest only increased. I became experienced in the whole range of indoor gardening tasks. I could repot, air layer, get rid of spider mites, tell the difference between over- and under-watering. I had a few good reference books. My friends all said I had a green thumb. You could say I thought I knew it all. And then we bought a house.

Yes, there I was, at the tender (?) age of 26, proud co-owner of a new house, on a 63 by 100 foot plot of soggy clay. I had never gardened outdoors, but I thought "How hard can it be?" I had visions of picking up a few plants from the local garden center, popping them in the ground, and standing back to watch them grow and bloom and impress all who passed by. We sat on the porch sipping our gin and tonics, discussing how wonderful it would be - walking on our own grass in our bare feet, cutting our own flowers for the table, sitting under the shade of our own trees. The sun came out and dried out the clay, the wind blew it through the screens, and our friends bought us a lovely plastic pink flamingo and stuck it in the dirt. It was wonderful - the wings would spin around in the wind.

One fine day the builder's "lawn layers" came around. First they spread a good layer of topsoil on the clay (a whole inch in some spots). Then they covered it with top quality sod (at least the chinch bugs like it). On another fine day some people from the town came around and plunked a lovely little tree in the middle of the town's part of our front yard. It was a linden (they left the tag on it). Great, I thought, we're half-way to a terrific yard. Now all we need to do is plant a few flowers in front of the porch, and we're laughing.

That was 11 years ago. I still think we're half-way to a terrific yard. Every year we do a few new things, and I struggle to keep the previous years' work from being terminally taken over by the weeds, or eaten by the killer snails (we have a mollusc factory hidden in the empty field behind our fence). I've dug up enough rocks to build another house, battled drought, locusts, and our neighbours' cats, and spent a small fortune searching for the perfect sprinkler. Every year I add a few new books to my growing gardening library. Every year I am responsible for the deaths of a few more trees as I feed my garden magazine habit. I'm sure I've learned a lot over the past 11 years, but frankly I usually feel like I'm only just starting out. There is still so much I don't know.

I decided to make this web site as a way to learn some more. I don't know enough to create a site of helpful hints, but I have lots of questions. What I do know has been learned mainly through trial and error, and so I have a few tales to tell as well. I hope you'll join me, and we can learn along together, and maybe have a few laughs along the way.

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