So, I’m getting ready to pick my first tomato. Not my first tomato ever, mind you, we had a little garden in our yard growing up, but the first one I guess I’ve grown entirely on my own? I honestly am not sure what I’m going to do with it, or even when to pick it. You see, I’m historically kind of terrible at this whole plant thing. My new deck garden is the first time I’ve ever really accomplished keeping something alive for more than a few weeks, and it’s kind of neat.
One can easily see why so many plants get assigned personalities or other anthropomorphizations (I think that’s a word). Aforementioned tomato plant is a bit of a dramatic thing, whereby forgetting even a little water results in it collapsing like a Victorian on a fainting couch. My mint plant’s a little too ambitious and remains in quarantine after it tried sending runners into other pots. The thyme and rosemary are the hardiest things in the lot, and some of the most used. Likewise I think I am going to have to try and kill both my basil plants. My pepper plants bloomed late, but I believe in them.
I’m going to try canning them, if we get that far.
The reason for the sudden explosion of plant life around the minute seat of this cadet branch of the House of Corriss is a simple two for one sale on plants. My original plan was just to grow the thyme and basil (as one friend asked, then answered, “Do you fresh herb at home? Wait… it’s you. Of course you do.”) They started from seed, as did the peppers (because, why not?) and are doing as well as the sale-bought plants.
Herbs were one of the few things I used to grow and keep fresh around the house, back to North Carolina when my father bought me one of those little hydroponic herb growers. I loved that thing, and I kind of wish I still had it. It has since been repurposed to grow dad’s avocado seeds, a rather successful endeavor considering he’s doing it in New Hampshire. Fresh herbs are just such a little bit of brightness to any cooking, especially in winter when I actually do most of my cooking. Work’s a little less busy, my days are a little less active, and honestly fall and winter foods are some of my favorites.
Raise a glass to roasts and braises and stews (but not soups. Different blog post).
But here’s the thing… two for one sales are tempting, and suddenly you wind up with a whole bunch of plants sitting on your deck, dutifully repotted and given plant food, and it’s a kind of “Now What?” moment. And I mean that. I have a really bad habit of killing plants. I’ve even killed a spider plant and a succulent once! Don’t ask me how.
It’s been as much trial and error as anything. Moving this plant so far out of the shade, or more into the sun. Learning when to water (apart from my dramatically fainting tomato plant) and having to check the weather for reasons other than thinking through outdoor seating at work. When they were young, I would bring them inside if there was a particularly troubling thunderstorm in the works.
Not all of them made it, of course. My lavender failed repeatedly (repeatedly (repeatedly)) for, if anything, sensing how much pressure was on it. Such is life. I think there’s a lesson, or at least a metaphor, in that dead lavender. Cilantro went and bolted and bloomed without my catching it, then snapped and fell one day out of the blue. We’re down one basil plant, gifted to a friend who then did not take care of it. But that’s part of it, right? Certainly more the norm of my verdant experiences than the current bounty still thriving on my deck.
With the kind of swinging moods I experience, especially in regards to the constant battle in my life between romanticism and melodrama, having something which requires a kind of constant attention and care as plants around is helpful. It’s, on the one hand, nice to know that I’m keeping something alive. It’s also nice knowing, and watching, the overall success of those kinds of labors. It’s the small things, the romantic moments of daily living. Hell, it is life, a part of my life at that, visible just out my front door. It’s also fresh chive over an omelet in the morning (oh yeah, I’m also growing chives), basil pesto being a more regular occurrence in my apartment (with plenty to freeze), and just a sprig of time in the pan cooking pork chops or duck.
I’m thinking of infusing olive oil, too, but that’s another project entirely.
Some of them will of course come inside come winter, and that’ll be a new struggle for them and me. Some won’t make it, and that’s okay. These things are seasonal as much as they are anything else, and having them around as a measure of the seasons is as pleasant a thing as any. It’s the middle of August as it is, a week from my birthday, the season of the sun and the season of fire. Plants are a part of that, and that first tomato will be as much an affirmation of life and of summer as that rising sun.