Confessions of a planter

Slight overlap of blogs here.

Cat: Why do plan' them eef you cort them down again?

Me: Because they need dead-heading.

Cat: Doan' ged no ideas abou' dead-headeen' me, Ok?

Me: Hm...

Cat: I weell zeep my leeps. You woan' heear me say nada.

Me: I'll believe that when I don't hear you.

Cat: ...

A comment by Colleen reminded me that I portray my terrace through, ah...rose-tinted glasses. It's conscious, of course.

Aphids aren't cute. Even though it's not easy being green. What do I do with them? I run two fingers up the stem and squash them. Green blood everywhere.

Blackspot. My fault. I didn't clear up all the dead leaves from last year, which were greatly afflicted by blackspot, and so that's probably why it hit the roses almost as soon as their leaves had unfurled. I pick off the dead leaves, but honestly, it doesn't help. It affects my climbing Iceberg the most and I think the plant is stressed and wants a new, bigger pot.

Nothing to say about the thyme. I just put the picture there to make me feel better. Last year I loved my catnip, this year I love the thyme.

The catnip is not doing what it did last year, and I know why. I just don't want to tell. It starts with M and ends with O and I won't do it again, but...I feel like a junkie gone cold turkey.

The pink agastache, just beginning. Interestingly, it smells like peppermint, not anise, like the blue ones. And I just found a recipe for hyssop (agastache)-poached peaches in the Herb Farm Cookbook, by Jerry Traunfeld. Now I need blue hyssop. I'll steal one from the Median, where they are Huge.

Now something odd. I sowed verbena seeds and what did I get? Lambs' quarters. I swear the seeds were incorrectly packaged.

They are in an overstuffed pot of thyme, rose, cosmos (from seed), volunteer bronze fennel.

This mint over-wintered in the gravel. And I planted some more after buying it in a bunch from a deli for $1 and letting it root in water for a week.

Sage is new and off to a slow start because I keep eating it. It's also beautiful mixed with perennials in an unfashionable border.

The last of the Icebergs. Quieter than Mohicans but just as sad when they fall in the night.

So there is a lot going on. Dying, growing, popping up, keeling over.

So much more interesting and rewarding than a couch at $200/hour. How much are shrinks going for nowadays?

Halal Meat Atlantic Avenue

My short piece about the no-frills/lotsa lamb Halal Meat Market on Atlantic Avenue, is in Brokelyn today.

Oh, the Times

Marian Burros, who wrote about the Obama's vegetable garden, called from the NYTimes some weeks ago and picked my brain at length about rooftop gardens (about which she apparently knew nothing, in a rather combative way). I suggested she consider terraces, too. She said, no, just rooves.

She calls back again today, and says she's considering terraces and asks where all our apples, fruit trees, herbs, etc. are located (I told her about them last time). Um...in our gardens? I say. She reads aloud on the phone an email I sent her weeks ago at her request, about a multilevel garden where we are planting espaliered apple trees, blueberries and herbs this summer. That doesn't sound like much food, she says crossly.

We have other terraces where we have fruit trees, vegetables and herbs, I venture. But is the entire terrace or rooftop devoted to them? she asks.

No...

Click.

Someone read it when it happens and tell me all. This is missing the entire POINT of gardening, and gardening in high places. It's multicultural, like New York. The blueberries live with the ferns. The apples with thyme at their feet. The Swiss chard in an ornamental urn. The serviceberries double as specimen trees.

All so humourless and fundamentalist...no wonder new gardeners are put off. It has to be This Way, or else.

Herbs on the edge

Thyme flowers are so pretty. A recipe of Roger Verge's calls for a few tablespoons of them in a chard and olive mixture for a delicious, flat tart. An optimistic sort of recipe, speaking volumes about its terroir.

The terrace creeping to the edge. There is a nice wide gutter to catch any errant pots, but so far there have been none, touch wood - and none of them are positioned near or over the door to the brownstone. Quel disaster...

The gaura will be next. Before it blooms it is red in leaf, and also in the fall. The Median gaura have shot up after their puny start.

One of the manymanymany self-seeded fennels. Buy a plant one year, get free plants the next. I love their airy leaves in perennial plantings.

Chives, of course. I've been eating the flowers , crumbled, in salads.

Three musketeers

Bainskloof, circa 1991.

Me, Fran, Jessica.

New York, Cape Town, Milan.

June begins

Poor Air France. Poor, poor, poor people.

My husband is a pilot. I am terrified of flying - even though I have experienced great beauty in flight. I am reading a book about train travel. I like to stay on the ground.

Brokelyn eats out

For Brooklynites, a choice of wallet-easy ( it's relative) restaurants, from Brokelyn. For whom I will be taking pictures, when time allows. Yes, I did drink the Manhattan in the photo.