Sassy Radish

I’ve never been a plant girl. Never quite understood what the fuss was about. You know, those things growing in pots, and you have to water them. Unlike with a dog or a cat, plants give you no love, they never cuddle next to you, and if they die, you might feel a hint of remorse, but chances are, you aren’t going to go into a month-long mourning because your lucky bamboo plant just didn’t make it.

So I never had much desire to purchase plants and besides the Japanese peace lily, all thanks to Hot Fuzz, I haven’t owned plants since living with my parents, and that was a long time ago. But I a garden. And I don’t mean a basil here and a rosemary here – I mean, I wanted a harvest. Things I can make into a salad, or pickle, or snack on.

And so in the dead of winter when KS and I talked of making better use of the upstairs deck when it finally warms up, we tossed around the idea of growing some herbs and vegetables come springtime. But who knew this was indeed going to become a reality – one that is blooming and showing us promises of summer’s bounty?

Over Mother’s Day weekend, we stopped by a nursery in Westchester and picked up all kinds of little green guys, gravel, planting soil, pots, organic plant food, and seeds. As soon as the plants were over at our apartment, we got to work. We planted during the dark, with limited light, often groping our way through this process. Neither one of us has ever really planted before, or grown vegetable from scratch, but we were excited and eager.

For the first week or so, things looked grim. Our plants were drying out, looking limp and on the brink of death. We watered them with great care, only at night, we talked to them, we mixed their soil, but to no avail. The herbs and vegetables were looking less and less like plants that were going to give us a harvest at the end of the summer – they were about to meet their maker! One of the plants, an alpine strawberry bush, gave up the fight. We used it as compost for one of the tomato plant, hoping that it’s what the strawberry bush would have wanted.

But then something happened, and I give credit solely to KS, who lovingly tended to the plants daily. Upon getting home from work, he would immediately go upstairs and water, plant, weed, fertilize and tend. One day he came down and said he couldn’t believe his eyes – the very basil and sage that were drying up and turning into straw days before, were strong, verdant and bushier than ever. He even plucked a few leaves of the basil for us to use!

Over the next few days the plants really took off. Peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers began to flower. Parsley that was all but dead, turned the brightest shade of green imaginable. Cilantro perked up. Sage grew another layer of fuzzy leaves. In short, our little almost-herbarium became something of a miniature Eden. And every day when we climb the stairs to the roof, we find more green leaves on each plant, more flowers, more promise of vegetables to come. The cucumbers, in particular, are growing as a frightening speed, almost doubling in size each day. And while it sounds a bit hoaky, we’ve turned into a bit of nerdy farmers in our after work past time. We’re delighted to see each new leaf and each new flower. And while plants might not look all that different from day to day, to us, who monitor them with a meticulous eye, they show something new every day. I have never thought that watching plants grow, plants that I am tending to, would be such a personally rewarding and thrilling process, but it is. I cannot imagine not doing this again and again. And expanding our garden to perhaps include a lemon tree, or a squash (already in the making). Who knows – by the end of summer, you might see pictures of things KS and I grew ourselves, on a rooftop of a downtown New York apartment – a little idyll of our own bearing fruit.