However I can remember three memories of it happening. The conscience of it all was between 5 to 10 years old at the most.
First it was within the allotment garden of my late father. It is still a vague memory to this day yet it has burst of colours and flavours. For the colours none beat the dahlias he planted for my mum. Brash and loud like 'Europe' singing The 'Final Countdown', those flowers amazed me by their vivid colours and shapes. They were a visual fireworks. As for the flavours, I remember the pumpkins and the soups all too well. It meant the redundancy ghost came into town and fired the workers it could not pay. 'Petrobras', an oil rig, did cost the livelihood of many men who built her, for she was not paid for by the nation who ordered her, hence it ruined a ship and oil rig building yard. She was a beautiful thing. I remember her sitting proud in the docks and I mourned an era when she capsized years later.
Then there is your first cactus bowl full of cactusy plants. Hard to keep... I think it was drowned in water by sheer ignorance... I loved that gift rewarding some of my exams... yet I was not that cultivated about cacti at that time.
But none of this is beating the papyrus plant I was given by a lady who had a massive one as a stunning unusual feature in her living room. When she handed me the head of one of them in my young hands with the instructions to make it thrive, it felt like a treasure, I followed them eagerly. Papyrus was for me exotic, but also so full of history. It was a plant with a curriculum. I was very successful at growing papyrus. I had a thriving recipe. However I named my plants and it disturbed my mum so much that she chopped the head off the entire thriving papyrus thinking it was alive with some kind of dark magic. When the head of Charlie, Liz, Lucie and so much more went down, I felt that unless I was a scientist or proper breeder, I was not allowed to give names to my endeavours. It didn't help me that I did talk to plants at that time. Seeing them thriving above her own head, my mum just freaked out. The day she did the cull broke my heart so much that I never tried to grow anything else in front of her eyes. I waited until I had my own place. 
Years later, three decades, I can now grow what I want providing time, space and weather. I am growing my own veg in a patio like fashion, aka, in containers. Tomatoes of different varieties and sweet and chilli peppers are my annual favourites while all the rest is still at experimental stages. Growing flowers like tulips and clematis is an adventure.
Today I planted a pumpkin seed which should become so gianormous as to be a fit contender for fairytale carriages...
I sowed cucamelon, aubergine, butternut squash, courgette, peas and firetongue borlotti beans, but also the experimental 'Luffa'. My partner, jealous of my luffa back scratching brush, wants one: lets grow one from scratch :)
I got the gardening bug from somewhere and it is there to stay.
Perfect match my partner's father was a gardener. He caught the bug from him. Together we have green fingers.
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