A Work In Progress

The first system was a weak one. I had a few blue buckets I would fill in the tub, and then I'd take them out to the balcony to dump onto the various seedlings. It was a thorough watering to say the least, but I wasn't growing tarot and they weren't water lilies, either. Further, the hauling of heavy water buckets grew tiresome, so for days on end I would ignore the whole enterprise. A hose would have been a godsend, but there are no hookups on the second floor.

In order to even out my water supply, I turned to a local farmers market that makes rain barrels. The hose attachment, for some reason, was about a foot and a half from the bottom of the barrel, so it took some doing to get any pressure. We put the thing on cement blocks to get some height, and now the water eeks timidly out of the hose. It's not perfect, but it's enough. The tank holds 55 gallons, which is plenty for a few weeks. What we don't catch in rain, we supplement with a hose stretched across the balcony from the washer and dryer. One day, my husband will install a proper gutter system, and we'll be really using dirt and rain.

After the awful murder of Dr. Jerry and Major Tom, I immediately killed a Camellia bush named Don. It was in early summer that I started working with herbs and vegetables, and also then when I made my first effort to actually understand the plants I was destroying. We adopted some tomato plants from Lowe's, and also jalapeños and bell peppers. I got potting soil, not garden soil, having discovered that there is a difference. I poked holes in the bottom of the planters. (Holes! Imagine that!) I tried a basil plant and some mint, planting each in giant plastic pots, way too big for their seedling size.






Slowly, they grew. I read about over-watering, and how it can turn the leaves yellow and bright green. I read about sunlight, and figured it was sunny enough. I read that some plants don't flourish in certain places, and learned that there are things called zones. Imagine my excitement when I found out that New Orleans is in the same zone as Hawaii, and all the wonderful things I saw on my honeymoon could be brought to life in my balcony jungle! I went out to the Walmart Garden Center and bought a big hibiscus plant, and promptly named it after our feisty bartender, Ferrel. Ferrel was joined by a majesty palm, Franz, and they were the first plants I ever didn't kill.






I adopted a friend's plant which she had recovered from a sorry state. It had pretty, huge leaves and grew like a bush. I wasn't sure what it was or what to name it, but I searched around and discovered it was called "diffenbachia" or "dumb cane," and was probably the reason my dog was spending most of his day scratching his face on the rug. It's toxic, even though it's terribly popular, and was definitely responsible for at least one episode of temporary blinding that I had blamed on allergies and dust in the air. Also, it wasn't supposed to be outdoors in extreme weather, and was generally intolerant of over- or under-watering. Toxic? Destructive? Fussy, stubborn? A diva? I named it after my former roommate, Tess.





By the end of the summer, I had done some homework and learned enough to be taken off the most-wanted list for plant deaths. I still didn't know why my tomato plants looked terrible and why the parsley next to the overgrown chocolate mint didn't seem to be thriving, but I was on my way. Just in time for fall, I had a plan for next year and a few notches on my gardener's belt. If we could somehow avoid a hurricane, i thought, I'll be just fine.

Nothing But Dirt and Rain

It all began with Geraniums. Tom and Jerry, the Geraniums, to be exact. (I name all the plants I don't eat.) This was long before I knew the first thing about plants. I had visions of looking through my bedroom's elegant french windows and seeing the Hanging Gardens of Eden, or whatever. It was going to be a jungle, I'd decided. The cityscape would be the perfect backdrop, all I had to do was not kill the plants.

In came Tom and Jerry. Technically, they were called "Dr. Jerry" and "Major Tom" because I was listening to a lot of David Bowie in those days. Those days/these days, I'm actually listening to David Bowie right now. They were beautiful and blooming and the leaves had scalloped edges as though Martha Stewart were consulting God on plant design. I was beyond impressed that the leaves were actually fuzzy, it seemed like such a nice detail.

Major Tom was the first to die. He took sick in late February, approximately three days after he came to my balcony. His leaves turned a subtle shade of lime green, then yellow, then bright yellow, then milk chocolate brown, then fell off. Finally, by Mid-March, he was gone. In his loneliness and grief, the good doctor fell ill as well. He passed before April Fool's Day, and my balcony was in a sad state. I was not deterred. I didn't actually know that plants were supposed to live more than a week or two, so I suppose I was impressed with my green thumb.

In retrospect, I realize that Major Tom was doomed from the outset. Not only was I showering him in a ferocious sunlight that lasted for 10-12 hours a day, but I was also submerging him in what must have seemed like the Indian Ocean twice a day. His compatriot was only better off for being on the southern tip of the jungle, where the sunlight relented after 3pm. He was also the daily victim of two hurricanes, and wasn't long for this world.

It went on like that for some time, and I guess still does. Learning "the first thing about plants" is actually quite an adventure, one that has taken me from the West Bank of New Orleans out to Airline Highway and all the Home Depots in between. I fancy myself a gardener, an urban farmer, a sustainability chief and a culinary wizard; really though, I am a plant serial-killer, wanted in several states for over-exposure to sun, leaf curl, and failure to test the pH balance of the soil. My quest is simple: whenever possible, replace mysterious food store produce with my own, grown from nothing but dirt and rain. The reality is grimmer, though, and much more complicated than it looks. Bear with me.