How Does Your Garden Grow?

Mine is good, thanks for asking.

Last year, Mike the Landscaper, came up with a concept of having a kitchen garden.  Fresh herbs and veggies perfect for summer food and fare.  We had a problem, though.  Neither of us, in laying out the landscaping allowed any room for my veggies.  By the time we realized it, I was resplendent in azaleas and hydrangeas, but couldn’t squeeze another plant in edgewise. Or so I thought…

There was, however, a little patch, in the front yard.  I immediately nixed the idea.  We all know how shaggy food crops look.  There was no way I was about to have an eyesore plunked down in the middle of my landscaping vision.  The very next day, I found ornate black iron obelisks with little fleur-de-lis finials.  I snatched them up, and told Mike we were back in business.

Turns out, Mike, like me, loved that tiny little restaurant in what we now call Uptown, but back then, it was just McKinney Avenue area.  What was that place called?  It was in a little house.  Oh, maybe Guinevere, or Gennivine, or something like that? (Paging Nancy Nichols…) Getting old stinks…anyway, my point is that they had a wonderful little chef’s garden.  The kitchen staff would traipse out to the garden off the patio, and harvest herbs and veggies right there.  This was never more exciting as a patron; than the night I ordered pesto pasta, and watched bunches of basil go from plant to plate. That was what I wanted.

I had just one sunny patch left, in front of the breezeway between the main and guest house.  Very limited in space, it was there or nothing.

Well, it was fabulous, and looked great.  I noticed something amazing.  Just having the garden there was a conversation piece.  It was weird.  At parties, and fetes at Chez Tackett the crowd was distributing more evenly.  Rather than clumping on the back patio, our guests were using the breezeway, walking along my flagstone paths under a cool canopy of trees…  It was great, and I felt like we were “using” more of our space.

One evening, late in the summer, sticks out in my mind more than any other.  The Trophy Husband began shutting of lights around 1:30 a.m. last Labor Day weekend.  His not so subtle hint:  it’s time to go home.  My friends, though, need more overt clues.  Like when The Trophy Husband threatened to shut the water off at the curb an hour and a half later.  One of my dearest friends, a dead-ringer for Audrey Hepburn was spotted shoving eggplants into her Prada bag.  (You know who you are…)

By the end of the season, the day before our first freeze, I had about a bushel of tomatoes left, green, and I ripened those in stages in lunch bags…through January.  It was divine.

So this year, we plowed the area behind the breezeway, added more iron features…pretty but functional as trellises.  It’s four times larger with the last one, and, yes, Steve, I’ve got fresh marjoram.  (As Steve so eloquently put it…you just can’t get fresh marjoram in this town…) The Trophy Husband and I split a cantaloupe just this morning.  So, while the FDA drags its heels, and we went from tomatoes to jalapeños…  Let me ask it again… How does your garden grow?