Three

Sometimes I miss having a garden. In Milwaukee I had raspberry bushes, tomato plants, herbs. Since moving back into an apartment I haven't had either the space or a sunny window for growing things.

But now... now I have a balcony. A nice south-facing balcony that gets full sun all day. It wreaks havoc on my cooling bills in the summer, but boy is it nice. In the wintertime those big windows flood my room with light and sun. That in combination with being on the third floor and my heating bills are probably the lowest they've even been!

An added bonus is that my apartment looks out over a small meadow toward a little line of trees. When I sit out there in the morning I enjoy my coffee while watching deer grazing in the meadow and listening to the birds sing. It's as close to living in the country that I've ever been. Troy is right over the hill, but from looking out my balcony you'd never know it.

So since I moved here I've grown a few kitchen herbs on the porch, but nothing else. This year I decided to try a tomato plant. I bought something called a patio tomato - a hybrid that grows small and is bred for container growing. With our cool, rainy summer I've been anxiously awaiting fruit and despairing of having any. Well, as you can see I have fruit, even if they're still green.

So now I'm waiting anxiously for a fresh tomato salad!