While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

A ripe old moment

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|| Note: This is a post for my Opa, whom I’ve written about many times in the past. (See The pitfalls of downhill roller skating or While my Opa was sleeping, or Dies ist Opa.) He died Jan. 6 after suffering for several years with Alzheimer’s disease. He was a jovial, outgoing sprite of a man whom most people describe as a character. He spent as much time creating life stories as he did telling them. Even at his foggiest, he could captivate a small audience, albeit by then most of his tales were wildly embellished or completely untrue. When it became clear that his star in this world was fading, I began the subconscious process of squirreling away memories — both significant and slight. The one you’re about to read falls under the second category. I’m not sure why it floated to the surface. Memories are like dreams sometimes. When they roll in you must abide. ||

A memory: I’m seven, maybe eight years old. I’m holding a coffee can that has two holes punched through the tin. An old shoelace is knotted through each hole to form a kind of coffee can necklace. It’s hot out. July, maybe. I’m in Upstate New York, wearing purple jelly sandals and a tank top. My arms are browning under the midday sun. My tongue is stained with blueberries.

I hand the coffee can to Opa.

I loop it around his neck like I’m crowning him with a gold medal after a long race. It dangles against his chest like a clumsy locket. Inside the can is motor oil, or at least I think it’s motor oil. It’s thick and black and Opa won’t let me touch it.

“Dees is dirty stuff,” he says, as he plucks a beetle from a raspberry bush and drops it into the can.

I trail closely behind him. My sisters too. The air smells like grass and manure. The breeze is subtle, but my hair is fine and flies away easily. We’re in my Oma’s garden, a large unshaded plot divided into neat rows of cucumbers, zucchinis, tomatoes and berries. We’re inching our way through bushes, my sisters and I, our shadows following Opa’s shadow, our legs burning from thorn pricks.

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The little yard that could

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This is Henry’s little red chair. I’ve got a thing for Adirondack chairs, no? Now my boy can sit in style next to his mother, who when she does sit, likes to sit in style. (Hello Sky Chair.)

The picket fence in the background was something of a neighborhood project. Without the help of family, friends, neighbors and virtual strangers, I’d still be sulking around St. Pete, grumbling about my fugly front yard.

Oh, but I love my house.

Well. Let me rephrase that. I’ve always loved the inside of my house. It’s got a cozy bungalow feel. It’s filled with comfortable furniture, meaningful art, an adorable toddler tyrant, a handsome husband and a fat, happy pug. What more could a gal want?

The front of my house, however, has always been a sore spot. Up until last month it had zero curb appeal. Our lawn was balding. Our once valiant attempt at a vegetable garden had become an angry bed of weeds, littered with bent fragments of metal fencing and forgotten plant markers. Our porch was about as inviting as a parking lot. With the exception of an overly shellacked manatee statue – a gift form my Oma – the entrance to our house was, in fact, off-putting.

We did try to jazz things up. Or rather, well-meaning family gardeners tried to jazz things up.

Two years ago, Oma took pity on us and came over when I was at work to lay down mulch and plant flowers in the sad beds by our front door. Despite diligent watering, her landscaping eventually gave way to weeds. Fed up with these failed attempts at beautification, we decided to let the one thing that wouldn’t die continue to grow – a frail Jacaranda tree in the center of our circular driveway that resembled a stooped-over geriatric.

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A garden variety valentine from my Oma

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The sweetest Valentine’s Day gift I’ve ever received came today in the form of my Oma, who pulled into my driveway this morning with her Ford Taurus stuffed with two dozen bags of red mulch and her trunk full of plants.

She was a German workhorse on a mission.

Basically, my front yard has looked like hell for a year.

Joe and I have been so busy and broke lately that the last thing on our minds is landscaping, not that we don’t curse our grass-less front yard and dead potted plants every time we walk from our cars to the front door.

The first year we lived in this house I lovingly tended to the plants and shrubs. Two years ago, my mom and I planted fuchsia petunias that flowered so big and brilliant the neighbors stopped to admire them.

Remember last year’s vegetable garden? The thing went bust midway through the spring. We ended up with a handful of cherry tomatoes, two deformed bell peppers and one cucumber. We’ve yet to plant another garden, or even one patch of marigolds (Joe’s favorite flower).

I’ve been slacking in the horticulture department. Big time.

Enter my Oma.

She’s a master gardener with two green thumbs, two green pinkies and two green toes.

She could grow a bed of orchids in a leaky bucket in the corner of a dungeon. That is if she had a dungeon.

The small yard surrounding her park model offers few landscape opportunities, which (I think) has made her stir crazy.

SO … today she arrived at my house with enough mulch to carpet the neighborhood and enough ferns and flowers to manicure a golf course.

I had several appointments and various phone interviews, so I was in and out of the house and otherwise occupied all day.

By the time I returned from my last appointment, she had filled all my empty pots with pansies, planted small sprouts of greenery where dead scraggly bushes once crept, laid more than a dozen bags of mulch and replaced the batteries on all my burned-out garden lights.

The funny thing is, I’m not even sure she knew it was Valentine’s Day.

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Bleeding heart photo by Simon Whitaker

Here’s to hoping our thumbs stay green

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Who here grows (or has ever grown) a vegetable garden?

It’s incredibly rewarding when it works and the biggest disappointment when it doesn’t.

We had rain showers all day yesterday and when I walked out of the house this morning, my tomato plants were almost three inches taller! Or maybe I’m exaggerating. Us garden geeks, we do that sometimes.

Last February, Mothership and I stuck tomato plants in pots by my front door. The resulting tomatoes were so succulent I couldn’t wait to harvest an entire crop.

So last summer, Joe and I dug a vegetable patch in our front yard. We bought seven tomato plants, four pepper plants and one cucumber plant. We laid spinach seeds, carrots and broccoli. We planted basil, oregano and rosemary. We were convinced our garden would yield so many vegetables that neighbors would grow fat off our land.

The attempt was a total bust. We planted at the end of June, when the UV rays in Florida are so hot and deadly you apply sunscreen before getting the mail and the thunderstorms are so brutal you dare not leave the house without an industrial strength umbrella.  Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

By July, most of our plants had turned yellow from too much water; their foliage charred from too much sun. The only plant with potential was one unruly cucumber and by mid-July even that was on its way out thanks to a gluttonous aphid.

This year is going to be different.

This year Joe dug the garden even bigger. We purchased additional stones, fencing, a soaker hose and eight bags of organic soil, which I know sounds prissy and redundant. We planted eight tomato plants, eight peppers, six zucchini, two cucumbers, and rows of snap peas, carrots and spinach in addition to the usual herbs. We did it the first week in March thinking we were total pros.

And then every champion gardener I met informed me that we were too late. Again.

Ah well. Wish us luck. I’m much more jaded about it than Joe. He thinks we’re growing enough tomatoes to make a sauce. I hope he’s right because at this point our reputation is on the line. Neighbors are beginning to wander into our yard to admire our bountiful jungle, which is visible from the road and will be a public embarrassment should it flop. Again.

Seriously people. If I can’t pass out fat zucchinis at the end of May, I’m gonna be bitter.

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PS. Fun fact: Joe doesn’t eat vegetables.

PPS. I have a hanging strawberry plant on the front porch. It gives me at least two red berries a day and shows no signs of slowing down. If the garden should take a turn for the worse, this is my consolation prize.

Homegrown tomato virgin takes a bite

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The tomato has been picked. 

After 10 minutes of staring at my first red tomato in all his round ripe perfection, I picked him, cradled him in my arms and tiptoed him to the kitchen, where I laid him down on a cutting board and halved him with a steak knife.
I picked some basil too. Cut mozzarella as well. Sandwiched it all together and then gazed again at the cutting board in rapture. Squealed even. Brought it all to my mouth and then stopped. 
I removed the mozzarella from the tomato and put the basil leaf off to the side. I couldn’t bring myself to mask my tomato’s virgin taste. I wanted him in his purest form. No creamy cheese. No pungent basil. Just my unblemished handsome tomato and me.  
He was delectable. Exquisite. Quite possibly the most succulent, luscious tomato I have ever tasted. The first bite was so gratifying I took another and another, until all that remained was basil and mozzarella, rendered useless by my tomato’s flawless tang.
I squealed again. 
“THIS IS AMAZING!” I yelled from the kitchen.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” Joe yelled back from the living room.
“THIS IS THE MOST WONDERFUL TOMATO ON EARTH. IT IS A SUPER TOMATO.”
“Good. I’m glad you think so,” said Joe, who hates all vegetables and fruits.
“MY STOMACH IS REJOICING! BABY, YOU’RE MISSING OUT ON THE TOMATO OF A LIFETIME.”
“I’m OK with that,” he replied flatly. 
As I returned to the living room with juice trickling from the corners of my mouth, Joe perked up from his basketball game and said, “I’ll have to make a sauce when the rest of them are ripe.”
I stopped. Licked the juice from my lips. 
“Oh hell no,” I snapped. “These tomatoes ain’t for sauce. I’ll plant you a sauce vine if you want. I’m eating these guys raw.”

Bite me, slice me, dice me

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I‘m suffering from a supreme case of writer’s block. 

So what do I do? Well. As always, there’s Lance. 
I come here more than I should whenever I’m stuck on a story; a paying story. It helps me get over uninspired humps. 
Sometimes.
Today I spotted my first big, red tomato hanging off one of two tomato plants I planted three months ago in the front yard.
If anything should inspire me, it should be this. I’ve never grown an edible thing in my life. Well, basil. But that doesn’t count. The pug could grow basil in his food bowl if he slobbered on it every day. 
The tomato plants were my mom and Joe’s idea. There were four big pots in our front yard when we moved into this house, in which the previous owner had planted squatty palms and purple ferns. When we closed on the property, the squatty palms and purple ferns were scorched from too much sun and wilting from too little water, so I pulled them out of the pots and stuck them in the ground, where they are much happier and healthier.
In two pots I planted tomatoes and oregano. In the other two, I planted marigolds and bushy pink flowers. Within a month my bushy pink flowers had tripled in size. And my tomato vines! Ah! I had so many little green buds I felt like Fannie Flagg. The front of my house had suddenly taken on a Better Homes and Gardens look. 
When a storm whipped through the neighborhood last week, I ran out the front door to stake my bent tomato vines to sturdy twigs. After much nurturing, whispering and watering, I couldn’t bear the thought of losing my tomatoes. They looked so pathetic in the wind and rain, bent over like a child with a stomachache. I never felt so much like my Oma than when I called for Joe in a panicked yelp, to bring me scissors and string so I could tie my vines.
Now that I’ve got this big red one sort of poking out at me, willing me to pick it, slice it and serve it over mozzarella and balsamic, I’m freaking out. What if it’s too soon? What if it’s too late?
If you know anything about tomatoes, please share your wisdom. I’m a novice vegetable grower, whose new hero is this guy: former Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver. 
Weaver, the 5-foot-7 short-tempered, smack-talking “Earl of Baltimore,” used to grow tomato plants down the left field line in Baltimore’s old Memorial Stadium. He and head groundskeeper Pat Santarone had a contest every summer to see who could grow the biggest, juiciest crop. Rumor has it Santarone once grew a tomato so big it wouldn’t fit in his ball cap. 
According to former first basemen Boog Powell, the mens’ tomatoes were so large, “one slice would way overlap the bread.” And according to Cal Ripken Jr., whose father worked for the Orioles in the 1960s and 1970s, Weaver used to fertilize his giant tomatoes in the Orioles bullpen using horse manure lifted from the Preakness Stakes. 
I wonder if pug manure would have the same effect. 
—
PS. To everyone who donated to my Ride for Roswell: THANK YOU! THANK YOU! In two weeks I raised $675 for the Roswell Park Cancer Institute – $175 OVER my initial fundraising goal. 
PPS. About Saturday’s hair post: the top photo was the $50 haircut. In these trying economic times I suggest patronizing beauty schools. No one will ever know your ‘do cost five bucks. Unless of course you blog about it.