your.moms.urban.garden.: Better Late Than Never

This week has been really busy with school and work so I want to apologize for leaving you all hanging since the predator post. Luckily for all four of you followers out there my body is at war with the pollen swirling around NYC and I have been up since 4:00AM sneezing like a maniac. I seriously feel and look like the spawn of a zombie and a crackhead. The only way to quantify how cracked out this allergy season is making me feel is to compare myself to Taz.

If any readers out there recall visiting me up on 116th St and had the (un)fortunate experience of coming home past 1:00AM then you probably ran into who we affectionately nicknamed Taz. She is perpetually on the verge of shouting obscenities, asking you for money or lunging to take a bit of your arm. Anyway, I guess on this early Thursday morning the person I feel closest to is my old zombie neighbor, Taz (short for Tasmanian devil). Just me and Taz at 4:00AM, two kindred zombie spirits, coughing, sneezing and scratching our way to relief! No amount of blog-o-sphere nostalgia can reunite me with her (sigh).

But I digress (I think the Zyrtec is kicking in). Better late than never refers to the pictures I’ve been meaning to post of our garden in it’s infancy. About a month ago Dave, special guest Mad Mike and I took a trip to the Gowanus Nursery.

http://www.gowanusnursery.com/

They opened on the first day of spring and lucky for us it was a beautiful day. The women who run the place are extremely friendly and knowledgeable. They could tell we didn’t have the greenest thumbs and were really helpful. Since they advised not to plant anything before the last frost (April 10th-how they have it down to an exact day is beyond me) we kept the shopping simple. Anything they had outside as of that day was fair game to plant and would last throughout the season. We bought a huge bag of potting soil and three herbs: rosemary, lemon thyme and oregano. We have a large window box that fits the herbs perfectly. We also bought tiny seeds to plant around the herbs or in the actual garden. Apparently they are edible flowers that can “spice up any meal!” (the hippy packaging cheesiness, not mine this time) but those have to wait until the last frost.

That left us with a good month to plan which vegetables we wanted to grow and where. Dave had been home in L.I. the weekend before and scavenged a bunch of wood, which we (mostly he) used to build a big planter box. The box is just about finished, save for a coat of wood sealer and a garbage bag lining so we don’t pump ourselves full of formaldehyde ala Taz. Holes have been drilled into the bottom for proper drainage but we still need to cover them with some sort of screen or netting. After that we can fill the bottom layer of planter with gravel and a load of potting soil. We probably could have finished this all in one weekend but, you know, procrastination isn’t a hobby; it’s a way of life.

So how will this garden look once we the box is finished? The idea is to plant tomatoes, green beans, maybe onion, more herbs (parsley, mint, cilantro), eggplant and some sort of leafy green. Some flowers (edible or not) would be nice for some of the pots along the railing of the deck. Oh. And Serena’s strawberry bush.

I hear the birds chirping so that must mean it’s almost 6:00AM. It’s either time for what most people would call’ the start of a really productive day’ or as I sometimes refer to as ‘time to stop drinking.’ Until then, enjoy these pictures of Dave building a planter and me doing nothing useful. Stay tuned for more this weekend - I have a long train ride to CT and really don’t want to waste the whole ride on statistics homework. Smell ya later, or as Taz would say, “BLERG ARG GRRWOARF BLAH BLEEEEH HEY MAAAAAAAAAAN CHEESEBURGER AH-WOOOOOO”.