Goodbye Greens

The truth? The best part about the mizuna was the yellow flowers. I picked them and ate them in a light sherry vinaigrette a couple of nights ago and at last!: some flavour. The cruciferous taste of brassica for the first time. So they are being evicted today, as is the arugula, which was not happy. I am still not sure why. It stayed small and the leaves tinted red. A soil issue, I think.

The fig nearly rolled off the roof and into the forecourt in a recent windstorm and the pot cracked, so that has to be transplanted even as it is bearing fruit. Not good. Imagine the irony if I had been killed by my own fig as I was going out in a cyclone to put trash in the bins. Or the worse-ness if my boy-cop-neighbour downstairs had been potted. He who let me use their extra pots for the flowers I planted in front. Or my recently-discovered other neighbour from whom I bought a vintage Schwinn a few days ago- I had ogled it, languishing with flat tyres in the basement-laundry...He's a landscape architect and all this time we never knew about our garden-connection until the bike-transaction. He lives an entire 12 feet below me with a dog that howls when ambulances scream past.

Or my floor-neighbour with three cats who is moving back to Alaska because after 6 months she hates New York (though born and bred here). Last time she and the cats drove nine days to get here. This time they are flying back. It is she who told me that the raccoon is still around. He hangs out on the fire escape on the western side of the building...

So from now on the fig will be secured and my neighbours kept safe. Today I will shop for something to replace the salads at the farmers' market at Borough Hall. Maybe GRDN. Today the gelsemium bites the dust, too. I would put it on the sidewalk for adoption but then it will just be taken to kill some other bees, elsewhere.