Category Archives: Flowers in a Frothing Green

Remember That No One Can Breathe Under Water

Posted by Tata on

Despite the noise coming out of Washington about this day as the beginning of a new era, I cannot see it as anything but the end of the American Dream.

There is nothing to celebrate. At this very moment, six million people in the United States live with no other income other than food stamps. Picture that. Food stamps pay for little more than just enough food to keep a person alive. That’s it. We have rules and regulations with which we guarantee that a certain segment of the population is too physically weak to speak up and shame us.

And now we are watching the shredding of the safety net for no good reason – as if there could be a good reason to punish our neighbors for being poor. If we have the government we deserve then we are real assholes.

To Be Told But I’ve Heard

Posted by Tata on

This object exists.

When I was a working artist in the nineties, I spent every waking moment reading, writing, working, thinking, writing, dancing, seeing art, hearing music, exercising, writing, reading and sleeping my way up and down the Eastern Seaboard. It would be hard to overstate how dedicated I was to whatever – and whomever – I was doing during those years, should you find yourself stating anything about me, but then you’d be talking about me and I hope it’s because I’m delightful now and not because I borrowed your husband for a torrid affair no one remembers anyhow. Like I said: dedicated. Single-minded. Obsessive. Completely focused on what I was doing, what I’d be doing next and how little time I had to produce the next project: that was my life. Miss Sasha could wander through here any old time now and tell you what a picnic I wasn’t to live with and when my brain went BOOM! I became a day at the land-mined beach.

That brings us to now. For the first time in my entire life, I do not feel much like using words. This is a baffling sensation for me. Words are my paint and paintbrush, my guitar and drum. I can barely summon the will to finish sentences half the time and if I had any skill at all with a camera this would be a photo blog. I don’t know what this all means. Perhaps it’s a stage of life or a stage in every artist’s life where the medium falls away and something else presents itself. At the moment, I want to communicate through the colors and textures of pickled beets and peach butter. The internet, while very useful, does not yet offer us the fragrances of cinnamon and sweet basil. I don’t know how to talk to you without rosemary-infused olive oil.

And there is never enough time to talk, is there? Especially when we don’t want to. There’s never enough time when berries are ripe and skin is warm with sweat and we move through this sweet quietude. In other news: near my sister’s house sits an enormous dairy farm. The homeowners’ association is most exercised about the aroma of cow poop on the breeze.

How Deep Do You Hold

Posted by Tata on

Pete took this picture after the sun fell over the trees. We finally have zucchini coming in, which is good because zucchini plants are crazy drama queens.

Here is a simple thing: this morning, Pete and I went out on an early bike ride. The air was crisp and clear, the sun bright, the power walkers looked jaunty. I rode the majority of the course with my hands over my head, pretending to win a stage of the Tour de France – one of the tough stages in the Alps, where the winner really sticks it to the entire peloton and not one of the flat stages where twelve large men cross the line so close together only the cameras can tell who won. Oh who cares? It’s a stage at the Tour and my sponsors will go crazy! I win!

…And then I was yelling at the driver going the wrong way on the one way park road in a decidedly Jersey fashion.

You Will Know That I’m Here

Posted by Tata on

Beets are sexay.


By the way: fuck you, Oak Park, Michigan, you dinosaur, you relic.

After her front yard got dug up for sewer line maintenance, Julie Bass decided to put in raised vegetable beds instead of reseeding the lawn. It was awesome – the neighborhood kids helped out, everyone got to see where their food came from, the Bass family got fresh cheap produce. Your basic home gardening idyll. But then some disgruntled neighbor, maybe someone who didn’t get enough free tomatoes, ratted Bass out to the city of Oak Park, which has rules about what kind of vegetation is allowed in front yards. When Bass wouldn’t move the beds, the city slapped her with a ticket and a misdemeanor charge. Bass is demanding her right to a trial – and if the city wins, she could legally get up to 93 days in jail.

With any luck, Julie Bass will sue Oak Park into well-deserved extinction.

You Won’t And You Don’t Stop

Posted by Tata on

No surprises here:

[Dr. Jill] Litt’s research has shown that community gardens are affordable and accessible to people across the lifespan — regardless of age, race, socioeconomic status or educational background. She found that community gardeners cultivate relationships with their neighbors, are more involved in civic activities, stay longer in their neighborhoods, eat better and view their health more positively. In fact, 20 minutes of gardening a day translated to statistically higher ratings of health. Moreover, people who garden found their neighborhoods to be safer, cleaner and more beautiful, regardless of educational and income status. These differences were rooted in the cultural, social and ecological connections created within the garden setting. The co-benefits of gardens stem from their ability to support healthy eating and active living. More than 50% of gardeners meet national guidelines for fruit and vegetable intake compared to 25% of non-gardeners. Gardeners report they get 12 hours a week of moderate to vigorous physical activity, which is about 30% more exercise than non-gardeners get.

Even if you have minutes to yourself each day, you can grow your own lettuce. Nothing could be simpler. You will need:

1 window box with reservoir bottom
1 packet leaf lettuce seeds
1 bag of organic potting soil
sunlight
water

Open a hole in the corner of the bag and pour dirt into the window box.

Open a hole in the packet of lettuce seeds. Lettuce seeds are very tiny; the packet may contain a smaller inner envelope. If so: open that too.

Pour about 1/4 of the lettuce seeds into the palm of your hand. Close that hand. Remember to keep it closed until I tell you to open it. NOT YET, WISEASS.

With your other hand, draw two parallel furrows lengthwise into the dirt in the window box.

Open your seed-containing hand, take pinches of tiny lettuce seeds and sprinkle them up and down the length of the furrows. You’re going to think, Uh, heads of lettuce need room. But leaf lettuce is mostly little leaves and need almost no room, so sprinkle away.

Gently turn the soil over a little until it’s flat. Now water the dirt. Stop short of making mud.

Leave the window box where sunlight falls on it and critters leave it alone. Water it every third day or so unless you’ve left it somewhere it gets rain.

If the bottom’s sodden, dump out extra water.

That’s it. Lettuce will grow if you do nothing else to this. It’ll take you about as much time and effort as moisturizing a packet of sea monkeys. And who doesn’t love those? – Just not in salad.

I’ve Been Calling All Day

Posted by Tata on

Outdoors is really just a giant terrarium, when you and your pepper plants think about it.

It’s Sunday, so here’s the garden. It’s got problems. It’s got issues. I am learning about square foot gardening at a rapid rate. For instance: four zucchini plants will not fit in any square foot gardening scheme, except possibly at the four corners, where they will be throwing spiny tantrums – and I know that. Why did I do this to my herbs and leafy greens? I don’t know. We suspect the deer are treating my fenced-in garden like a salad bar without a sneeze gaurd, but I can’t prove that without a trail of bacon bits. My neighbor came outside one morning and found a family of surly deer standing inside his fenced in garden, smoking menthols. The deer didn’t even run away. They stared at our neighbor, asked for directions to the convenience store and lumbered off. So maybe that’s why my eggplants are leafless.

One thing you can see clearly is plants that survived the groundhog rampages are doing well. Sort of. They’re doing a lot of something but it’s hard to tell what, exactly. It may turn out that we need six-foot fencing, which may not help with future groundhog problems. We’ve had this conversation often recently.

Us: We have a groundhog. Ate half our garden.
Helpful person: You should shoot him!
Us: If we drew a gun in our backyard the police would be on our roof in a matter of minutes.
Helpful person: Well, that’s what I’d do.
Us: We’ll visit you in jail!

Basil germinating in two window boxes is almost ready to move out of the greenhouse. Pesto: here we come.