I forgot to mention that my hometown,
Winnipeg, was named the Slurpee Capitol of the world for the 7th year in a row. There’s a story about it here. And you can take a look at the Slurpee website here.
I’m not sure why a city nicknamed Winter-peg drink so many frozen beverages, but we do. And we love them. Drink up – and when you get a nice brain-freeze, think of Winterpeg.
By no means am I a gardener. I used to live in a house with a large 
backyard with plenty of room for a garden patch – but I was never interested. Now that I’m in a condo, with a tiny backyard – and no garden area, I’m all about growing my tomatoes and herbs and strawberries.
There something about watering, weeding and just enjoying my little planters of vegetation that brings back childhood memories for me. It’s taken me many many years to realize this. When I was growing up, my grandmother had an impressive garden. Over half of her backyard was dedicated to growing the best vegetables she could coax out of the dirt. Our weekly dinners at her house often featured items from the garden – and they tasted so good. They had real flavour.
But the best thing about her garden wasn’t what we were served at dinner. The best thing was a pre-dinner treat we’d get in the summer. I’d often arrive at her house earlier than the rest of my cousins, and I was allowed to spend a few minutes in the backyard picking sugar-snap peas. They didn’t grow in the main garden, but along the fence separating her house from the neighbours. As I was picking the peas I’d look over the fence into the neighbour’s yard. I was fascinated by the laundry lines zigzagging their ways across the backyards of all the homes in the neighbourhood – we didn’t have those on my modern street!
There was no chance for the sugar in the peas to turn to starch – I cracked them open and popped the little green spheres right into my mouth after picking them. They tasted like peas. They were sweet. They tasted like summer.
I don’t have peas growing this year. It’s my first time attempting to ‘window-box garden’. Nothing has grown enough or ripened yet – but I’m already planning next years garden. Will peas grow in a window box? I can already taste them.
(The first two pictures are of a couple of my tomato plants – one plum, one beefsteak. They’re now about the size of cherry tomatoes, and nowhere near being ready to eat. The third picture is of one of my strawberry plants – also far from being ripe.)
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