Usually, this is my favorite time of year in my garden. The big leaves are at their biggest and the trees and shrubs are having their fall growth spurt, and the garden is a bit closer to the jungle of my dreams. After a few rain storms have freshened things up and softened up the ground, this is a great time to go plant shopping and start fall planting, while you can still clearly see any bald spots before plants hide underground.
Ordinarily, every year the garden is a little better than the last. But this year my garden took several steps back with a terrible string of bad luck. It’s more bald spots than plants. (more…)
First, let me apologize if I got a certain relentlessly cheery 1980s pop song stuck in your head with the blog title. I’ve been punished, it’s now stuck in mine.
There were two things that came across my field of vision recently that led me to this earworm. First, an article on NPR warned me that freaking out about getting stuck in traffic could kill you just as dead as more major life stressors, so stop it. I don’t really freak out about matters of traffic (anymore), but I am guilty of overbooking, chronically running late, and getting all worked up with guilt and anxiety. Hey, did I mention I meant to post this yesterday? Ahem.
Just as I was worrying about worrying, I stumbled across a happy little factoid about cruciferous vegetables significantly reducing mortality rates. I googled here and there and didn’t find consensus on the math of cruciferous super powers , but it seems we can all agree on some degree of less-dying when we eat these tasty veggies. I may not have mastered the anxiety free brain, but I’m covered when it comes to gobbling up cauliflower and friends. (more…)
The garden is feeling camera shy this week. It’s had a long dry summer and we are both really looking forward to some rain. I’m starting construction soon, finally replacing my chain link fence after years of masking the eyesore with plants. Since many of my plants took a beating this year anyway (due to many factors, spilt milk), it seemed like a good time to hit the pause button and get a proper backdrop in place. At this point I’m just coasting out the summer and looking forward to next season, in this case, spring, when the construction is done. In my fantasy garden “next season” is never two seasons away, waiting out the fall and winter in anticipation of spring, holding over with only the evergreens, so the garden isn’t completely asleep. It would be much more fun to approach winter with anticipation of a spectacular garden show. I have such envy every time I see winter trees and shrubs covered in fruit and berries, and realize the garden could still be unfolding all year round, festively decorated and inviting the birds to stop by.
Several years ago, I toyed with the idea of moving to New York City for work. A little house hunting revealed there were no places in my budget that came with even a little patch of soil to call my own. I remember standing out in the summer garden on an especially beautiful night, wondering how I could ever leave my dirt. And in the end, I couldn’t.
This spring I spent some time in Matera, a town in southern Italy originally built in 3rd century BC. Houses are caves carved from stone, streets and buildings atop more houses. The city was evacuated by the Italian government in the 1950s when malaria was rampant, and families lived in the caves alongside their animals, without sanitation.
In the 1980s, redevelopment began, making many of the caves livable again. The roads in this part of town, the Sassi, are mainly pedestrian only. I can’t even imagine how people move furniture or bring home groceries. Surely they must find an easier way than I did, when lugging my suitcase through the maze to my hotel when arriving my first evening.
It’s all terribly beautiful and incredibly humbling to stay in these rebuilt ancient structures. At the same time there are still many untouched structures, and it can be hard to tell from the outside which of the caves are places someone calls home.
One of my favorite signs of life was the presence of gardeners. With no ground to garden in, and no obvious convenient way to bring in big heavy bags of potting mix, mini gardens are tucked in wherever they will fit, in rooftops, rubble, and impossibly heavy containers that must have been there forever.
I’m embarrassed. Back when I worked in an office, I used to hide in my cubicle while coworkers distributed their excess garden harvest. There always seemed to be zucchini, which topped my list of duck-and-cover foods. To be fair, I had only ever had zucchini as plain sticks around the veggie party platter, destined for some plastic tub of dip, or sautéed, neither of which are my favorite presentation to this day.
My opinion of zucchini changed on vacation in Italy a couple years ago, where zucchini made a regular appearance on menus, served as paper thin slices grilled with a touch of olive oil, salt and pepper. I initially tried it to be polite, but it was truly delicious, and opened my eyes to new possibilities. You know how once you learn about something new, you see it everywhere?
Pardon our confetti – we have been celebrating. You see, it’s been four years since we started dreaming up the idea for plant lust.
We wanted, for both selfish and generous reasons, to hunt for our plant wish list from all the fantastic independent nurseries we could find – and then some. We wanted to know what our plants would grow to look like. And we wanted to be able to search for whatever weird plant obsession had currently possessed our thoughts. The velvety, the odd, or just plain smelly. I can’t explain it, I just find them fascinating.
