To Rooftop Garden Or Not

♫ Coffee. I've had my first coffee. ♫
I stole that song from a Twitter friend. I'll have to fess up. Don't want to be known as a Twitter Thief. Finally broke that bagel and coffee rut I was in. Today it was toasted rye bread, banana and ♫ coffee ♫. Read the newspaper and there is no Dagwood on Sunday, so that sets the tone for the day. Dagwood will be back tomorrow, I can muddle thru till then.

An article the other day, about half a page, gushed with the benefits of a rooftop garden. I look at this as blatant irresponsibility staring down at me with the fangs of T.Rex. All the Green, Tree Hugging, apt. dwellers will look at this and think. Yes! That could be me. Their eyes become glazed over with visions of rooftop fields of Lettuce, Tomatoes and Bok Choy. Trees for Christmas and two Maple Leaf trees to get Maple Syrup from and hold their hammock. In actual fact, what they will probably plant is radishes. Everyone seems to plant radishes.

Lets get back to the garden on the roof. Get serious.You can't just go out and get a ton of dirt and dump it on your roof. These gardens are for buildings that are especially designed for this purpose. If your garden isn't sitting atop a drainage system, where is the water going to go. (Now speak like a 5 yr.old.) "That's ok, the plants will drink all the water and be really healthy and we will have lots of Bok Choy." Now on to the Christmas and Maple Tree. Ever hear of roots. No, not the TV show. The things a tree has instead of feet. On TV they can walk around with them but in real life they are stuck in one place. And like most peoples waistline the roots keep growing. They grow down, into any crack in the cement they can find. The result. You will be infested with birds nests and squirrels.

Years ago, a friend of mine told me about his brother who managed an apt. building in Toronto. A tenant complained that there was water leaking from his ceiling. The mgr. figured he better go look. Sure enough, the whole ceiling was leaking water. Upstaires was a family from Pakistan so he went up to check. He knocked on the door and when it opened he noticed that the whole living room was a garden and the man was there with a hose watering it.

Saw this photo in the paper this morning. At first glance it was, "Oh my God, Alien right here in Halifax." But after a mouthfull of ♫ coffee ♫ I saw that it was just a guy living hand to mouth.