Garden Apartment?
Why do they call it a garden apartment?
When I think ‘garden apartment’, I picture a quaint Italian villa covered in rusted ivy, delicate salmon stucco, and a high walled garden off the back, overflowing with bougainvillea, roses, honeysuckle, jasmine, lavender, and tiny fruit trees. I think of humming bees and floating butterflies. I hear wind whispering through the green while I sit at an elegant iron table sipping expensive espresso from a tiny china teacup.
In Chicago, a garden apartment has sealed windows so criminals can’t get in. Sometimes the view is blocked by those 1980’s wavy glass blocks, or with frosted glass welded shut by eons of paint. No matter how opaque they are, they’re always covered by iron bars like a prison cell, and they never open. The view is half dirt and half leaves, or grass, or dead rats, all liberally mixed with trash from the street. The apartments are dark and stuffy, no way to air them out on a spring day, or after a meal of refried beans with sauteed cauliflower and broccoli. You cannot hear a summer rainstorm, cannot see the flashes of lightening in the sky, or smell the rich scent of wet renewal filling the air. You never fall asleep staring at the stars, basking like a druid in the light of a full moon. The balmy air of a summer night never touches your skin.
The biggest problem with a garden apartment is the price. They are so darn cheap. Look at one and your first reaction is “I wouldn’t live in this grave if it were the last hole on earth.” Then you get the price. As an example, my current third floor walk up costs me a jaw dropping $1370 per month with free heat only. To the east, my view is totally open–four almost floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a pair of enormous chestnut trees. In the back of the apartment, the western view out of my office is bright sun and three pretty little maple trees whose leaves stay long into the winter because they are sheltered between the buildings. I get a breeze when it is warm, and I get sunbeams to dream in while it is cold. I hear the rain.
Freelancing is tough, so yesterday we went and looked at a “Garden Apartment” located in a wonderful neighborhood near a great elementary school for Aleesa. I felt my soul shrivel as we wandered around in the little cave. Don’t get me wrong, the place is clean, big, and comes with lots of amenities. A talented decorator could turn it into an art deco’ studio-type space. But the windows were the size of a tissue box. The master bedroom doesn’t even get light since its windows are completely submerged in dirt. $685 per month. All utilities paid, with free high speed wireless internet and basic cable. We’d save over $1000 per month if we moved there.
I’m sick about this.
They Call Me Tia 
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