LittleJudy.com

Is That A Pistil In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Glad To See Me?

I went to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden today. It was a little hot, but I stayed mostly in the shade. It was really beautiful, and if you're in New York you should definitely check it out. My favorite was the tropical pavillion.

One of the exhibits in the conservatory was this giant plant that is on the brink of blooming. The Amorphophallus titanum rarely flowers, and when it does it produces a big stinky flower from 4 to 6 feet tall. (The name of the plant begs for an off-color joke, but I don't work "blue" so you'll have to use your own imagination.)

I walked into the gallery and the guard said, "please remember that there is a webcam in the gallery and you might be seen on the feed."  I suppose that's to keep people from picking their nose on camera.

The plant hasn't bloomed yet, so although its size was impressive I'm sure it's nothing compared to the way it will look when it blooms.

They're keeping track of the plant's progress on a blog and you can also see photos and of course the webcam (hopefully sans nosepicking.)

Link: Blooming of Amorphophallus titanum at BBG » Blog Archive » Early-bird special?.

First Harvest!

Here is a handful of the little grape tomatoes I harvested today. I guess they took about a month to grow. Aren't they cute? I have to let them ripen for a few days. After that I'm going to either put them in a salad, marinate them and serve them as an appetizer or just eat them one by one like, well, like grapes!

Their correct name is "Elfin" and I got them as a baby plant from chefsgarden.com. I am growing them in a big container on my terrace. I have both southern and western exposure. I feed them once every six weeks and water them every other day (unless mother nature really goes nuts with the rain).

I just came in from farming the back 40!

As if!

I don't have a back 40 (or 20, or even 10). I don't even have what you could call, with a straight face, a garden.

I have a terrace with a bunch of plants in containers cowering in fear that I am going to be taking care of them.

This is a new phase in my life. I've never had plants. Ever. Much less a place to garden outdoors. I've only been able to take care of a friend's or neighbor's plant(s) if I've had very detailed instructions. Even then, I've been known to kill a plant or two like the time I was house-sitting my friend Plum Blossom's apartment and just forgot that there was an herb garden growing in a windowbox.

"If it doesn't bark or meow I simply forget it's there," was my feeble explanation.

All that has changed. Perhaps it's a re-channeling of my unused maternal instincts. As if there's some demanding voice deep inside me saying, "Dammit, woman, at least you could raise something at this stage in the game." Or, perhaps it's just that I've finally achieved enough serenity in my life that I make time to stop and smell the roses--or the lemon tree, to be more precise.

I'm having so much fun with my adventures in horticulture. (Go ahead, recite the Dorothy Parker quote.) I've managed to keep my geraniums alive for a year; my jade plant and peace lily are flourishing. I think my cactus plant is also doing well. They're such stoic little fellows, though. With no leaves to droop it's kinda hard to tell how it's feeling.

My battlefront outside is on the tomato plants. It seems I have whiteflies. I read that if you shake the plant and a bunch of tiny little white specks fly upwards you have a whitefly problem. I sprayed the leaves with soapy water and then rinsed them off an hour later. That considerably reduced the infestation. And the nice lady at the Chelsea Garden Center sold me some whitefly traps that are basically yellow sheets with sticky stuff on 'em. You hang them above the plants and then shake the plants and the whiteflies fly right up to the trap and get stuck. Apparently the whiteflies are really attracted to yellow. Unfortunately, so is my hair. I keep forgetting about the traps and when I lean over to examine the plants the wind blows my hair into the trap. Ow! So now the traps are these interesting little yellow flags with the poor whiteflies lying helplessly between the strands of my hair.

Next time I'll put my hair in a ponytail before I go outside.