Gardening

The seed catalogs started arriving in December. I didn’t order them — they just appear, like they can smell the desperation of a gardener trapped inside by winter. Baker Creek. Johnny’s Selected Seeds. Burpee, because I’m a basic suburban-adjacent gardener and I’m okay with that. I keep them in a stack by my reading chair, and on these cold January evenings, I flip through them like other people flip through Vogue. Except instead of fantasizing about designer clothes, I’m fantasizing about a garden that produces so many zucchini, I have to start leaving them on neighbors’ porches under cover of darkness. ...

We got our first ripe tomato yesterday. I know, I know — this is not newsworthy. People have been growing tomatoes since forever. But you have to understand: I genuinely did not think this would work. I planted the starts in May, when the soil was still cooler than it should have been. Then we had that weird cold snap in early June that turned half my pepper plants to mush. The neighbor’s cat decided my raised beds were his personal bathroom. Emma “helped” by watering the tomatoes approximately seventeen times in one afternoon. ...