Signs of Life

When we lived in Iowa we had a sweet old house with an enormous yard that looked, sometimes, like this:

Dreamy!

In the late spring I would plant a fantastic vegetable garden: 

and by the summer our dinners would often look like this:

90% home grown. Just look at those purple potatoes!

It was the tendency Iowa has of looking like this that was a major motivation to get back to sunny California just as soon as grad school was over:

I still get cold/sad just looking at this.

Hilariously, now that we're in this magical climate where one can garden year round, we're living in a yard-less apartment.

All we have is a sunny shared back patio that I'm still too shy to use, and a bunch of windows...

But lookie here, the windows are working!

(parsley, basil, lavender, strawberry)

Just check out this sweet strawberry baby:

Observe my little lemons:

One of these days I'm gonna stake a claim to the patio, where, when I peek out timidly through the curtain I can see that my neighbors are growing tomatoes, kumquats and a ton of flowers. But until then, I'm happy with my little window champions. One day soon we're gonna have dinner based entirely on strawberries and lemons and it will taste so. good.

I love this place.