Friday Evening Updates & Our NYC Herb Garden

Happy Friday evening, one and all!  The apartment is clean, dinner is in the oven, the windows are open, and there is a smell of rain in the air.  I've got Vivaldi on the radio and, just for a moment, all is right in the world.

This week's warm-up coaxed the tulips in our building's courtyard to open up and greet the sun.  There are gentle aspects of NYC that I'll never quite reconcile with its overall feeling of being a human meat grinder,  and the explosion of springtime flowers in Queens is one of them.  I'm grateful our super put in extra bulbs last fall even though it would have also been nice to have our oven fixed, bathroom tile patched, door painted, black mold treated, and window screens put on.  But hey, the flowers are beautiful!

And speaking of flowers, last week our whole little apartment became a garden: 

It feels good to be surrounded by green again.  And the herbs have already become my best friends in the kitchen.  I've been filled with nostalgia about our old community garden back in the Midwest.  I've forgotten about the weeds and the droughts and my creaky bones, and have instead been missing the smell of the soil, the bird songs while I worked, spending time with my neighbors, laying down in the sweet grass after pulling weeds, and the mint that grew wild by the water pumps.

There are no green thumbs on my hands, so I'm trying to be methodical about my plant experiments by keeping a gardening journal.  It reminds me of what I've planted next to what, which plants prefer sun and shade, the watering recommendations for each, and also what recipes I've used them in.  Is it greedy of me that I've always just wanted to grow edible vegetables and herbs rather than flowers?!

I know that nothing will ever beat the tomatoes and tomatillos and carrots and strawberries I somehow managed to coax out of the ground back in in Illinois, but I'm doing my best to try to "live small and real" here in Queens, and part of it is not letting this jungle stop Mr. Mersy and I from connecting to the soil.  

I suppose I've had blossoms on the brain recently, because last weekend before we headed out to Flushing Meadows for a picnic and bocci ball with friends, I made a batch of gluten-free cupcakes.  This time, letting them cool properly and slightly over-cooking them made sure that they didn't turn sticky.  And the little rice paper flowers were gluten-free, too!

I hope that some warmth and some green have snuck into your life recently.  What are you growing on your windowsills this year?

Lots of love,

~Mersydotes