Urban Farming, take two.

Three years ago, on one of our drives through West and North Philly T-shirt and I had a stroke of genius. Why don't we start an urban garden on one of Philadelphia's vacant lots? The city is filled with them; nearly every neighborhood (save the aptly named, uber-bourgeois, Society Hill) has at least one plot of land that is in serious need of rehabilitation. We could stay in Philadelphia, have jobs that we liked and provide a service for the city. The wheels started turning and we decided to make some moves.

As the weeks went by and the weather warmed, we visited a nursery in North Philly for inspiration and advice. We quickly realized that a large scale urban garden requires a significant investment accompanied by a large and devoted staff. Undeterred we began to plan the next couple months. The land would be relatively inexpensive because it's Philly (enough said). T-shirt would gather technical advice from her mother, an avid gardner. Since she would be in Philly for the summer slaving away at a law firm we decided that I could start to plant some crop at my parents house in NJ (shocker - I was to immediately return home after graduation because I didn't have a job lined up...shocker 2.0-this was 2007, when any moron who could spell their name and had a college degree could find a job...unfortunately I kept forgetting "Phillips" has two "L's").

Then disaster struck: SENIOR WEEK. Actually, to be honest, disaster struck much earlier. Now, I can only speak for myself but when the weather gets warmer I immediately get boozier. I don't want to stick beer bottles in T-shirt's mouth but I think she suffers from the same affliction. Long story short, we fell into a vicious cycle of happy hours, binge drinking, saying goodbyes and not remembering a G.D. thing and starting the process all over again...FOR 2 MONTHS.

Needless to say, we left college violently hungover and full of fuzzy memories. I left with a little something extra...no, you dirty, dirtrry readers, not a STD but Mono. Before we knew it I was pumped full of steroids and on a plane to Europe and T-shirt was living in a sweaty shoebox off of Rittenhouse sqaure, both of us filled with self-loathing and unfulfilled dreams.

Flash forward to the past few weeks. I am in Brooklyn living with three roommates, two of them SJU alums. My roommate Dave and I share a similar ideology when it comes to food; local, fresh and cheap. So we have decided to set up a small garden on our roof. I am going to (hopefully) blog on a weekly basis about the trials and tribulations of growing your own food in a limited space by two people who are clueless about gardening. I will include pictures as often as possible and maybe will even have some special guests blog for me. Or Maybe I won't. Who knows. Wish us luck.

And sorry for such a long post - I promise never to go on this long ever again.