Produce

My good friend Shannon lives in Brooklyn with her fiance Khuong. I've talked about them before. This morning, while I was farting around on facebook, I saw that Shannon had posted some new pictures. Some of them were of their sweet little fire escape garden they planted for the summer. They are growing herbs and tomatoes. They may be growing other things, but she didn't post pictures of the "other things" so I only know about the herbs and tomatoes.

Looking at Shannon's pictures reminded me of a few things.

First it reminded me that I was supposed to be leaving this coming Thursday to go see Shannon and Khuon in the big city. Then I had my accident and had to postpone my departure. This is something I have allowed myself to be a little bitter about. One, because I love New York. Two, because I love Shannon (and Khuong) and I don't get to see her nearly enough, and three because this trip was supposed to be my birthday present from my wonderful husband, and now I don't have a present.

The next thing I thought of was that Andy was planning on making a little garden at the ski shop this summer. There isn't a lot of business at the shop this time of year and there is a perfect little garden spot on the side of the building. This is something else that my accident has put on hold, but now that I'm a little more self sufficient and can be left alone for a while; maybe Andy can plant his little garden. Warm weather comes a little more slowly here so it's probably not too late. I really love tomatoes, especially home grown tomatoes. As soon as Andy gets out of bed I'm going to remind him of his garden plans.

Lastly, I was reminded of the summer we spent at our previous apartment, and like Shannon and Khuon, we attempted to grow a little garden out on our porch. Mostly we just had flowers, all of which died except my hydrangea plant. It went into hybernation mode for the winter and our landlord dumped it out in the trash. He thought it was dead and that he was doing us a favor. I was ready to kill him, but I didn't because I realized he was just trying to help and after all, I could just get another plant in the spring. I did get another plant, but not until we moved into our current apartment where there is a little flower bed outside our door. My hydrangea is in the ground now, where no one will mistake it for a dead potted plant. It needs to be pruned so it will sprout this year.

The only food item we tried to grow in our little potted garden was tomatoes. Have I told you how much I love home grown tomatoes? If I could get my hands on an heirloom tomato plant I'd guard that thing like my life depended on it. Have you ever had an heirloom tomato? YUM!

But I digress.

Our tomato plants didn't do so well. They needed a lot more space and soil than we were able to give them in our meager terracotta pots. We were terribly dissapointed in our bounty, or lack thereof. We only managed to produce one tiny cherry sized tomato. It was the most beautiful shade of red. We let it stay on the vine a little long in hopes that it might grow larger, but it stayed cherry sized. But it didn't, so we picked it and ceremoniously cut it in two equal parts. Then we each ate half of our harvest.

That was the best damn tomato I've ever eatten. Andy agrees. Seriously. When we were done eating our halves we looked at each other and said, "I want some more" simultaneously. I can still remember how it tasted.

We took a picture for posterity's sake.
This is almost fully grown,
but it did turn red, like I said

My hope is that this year we will produce that same wonderful flavor, but in much larger quantities. I'll be sure to update you.


*This totaly random post brought to you today by a highly medicated blogger. Sorry...