New evidence: I started early!

I've written about my start in gardening before, where falling trees in my yard created impromptu planting beds, and the bug bit me. That was around 2002, maybe a year or two earlier. So I've been a gardener for about 15 years or so. Or so I thought.

Newly-discovered evidence has proven that my gardening started earlier than the year 2000. Much earlier indeed!

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Super 8 home movies recently digitized by my sister show that (above) being in the "garden" made me very happy even before I could dress myself. They also show that...

1) I have always had an obsession with keeping the walkways clear:

(Could anything be further from the truth?)


2) I have often been fascinated more by what I find on leaves than by the leaves themselves:

3) Things that grow in cracks have always been special to me:

4) I have unassailable skill with garden tools:

(It sometimes feels like I'm still holding the rake this way)


5) I know how to rest once a job is finished:

6) And congratulate myself for a job well done:

7) Contrary to what I just said above in number 5, I really have a hard time stopping once I get started in the garden:

To get the full impact of my self-realization, you must watch the video. There's no soundtrack and it's certainly not HD-quality, but you'll see the love of plants and garden that we all share I think:

This was all filmed in my grandparents' tiny Chicago backyard at 2815 N Mason Ave (if you want to see what it looks like now). I don't think the peonies are still there, and where did all of the big street trees go? Grrrr.


Does anybody else have any gardening "roots" discoveries to share?

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