Love: The Key Nutrient for Growth

Hello friends! I want to share about how lucky we have been in growing our garden in our small, one bedroom, second floor apartment. One of the first parts of Portland that Ben and I fell in love with was the strong establishment of "locavores". People who grow local, eat local, breath local, love local. I feel confident in saying that Portland is one of the few places that has atleast one farmer's market every single day of the week during the summer. Naturally, we wanted to be a part of this local culture, so our first purchase was basil, mint, and a tomato plant. Heirloom, to be specific. We propped them out on our fire escape and slowly, day by day, our plants and our garden grew. Note: our fire escape ends with our level. There is no ladder down to the ground, so therefore we thought that we had no other choice but to give it purpose:). An eggplant, two more tomato plants, cilantro, sweet banana peppers, and beets were added to our green family.
I am going to leave out the part where a squirrel, or quite possibly a tree rat, decided that she or he was more worthy of our first, ripe heirloom, as well as a handful of other pre-pubescent tomatoes. We built a net fence and all is well, so we now dedicate our energy to loving the lucky ones than to dwell on the lost.
The picture above is the first, delicious tomato that we ate from our garden. With a touch a salt, the tomato made our taste buds sing out and the corners of our mouth crawl up to our foreheads. Even better than the taste, however, was the fact that it came from our garden. I would advise anyone and everyone to try growing a single edible plant. There are plenty that can be grown inside, with the right care, if you are not lucky enough to have a defect fire escape or a garden. Organic food is delicious and nutritious for your body. Local food is a great answer to the question of how to give back to a community that has given you so much. But when the food comes from a living organism that you planted in soil, that you watered, that you greeted in the morning, you know that what you are eating was brought up with happiness and love. What better nutrient to consume?