An Occult Apperatus

 I live in an apartment, and I don't have a yard.  What we do have is a tiny little back patio, and what I've been doing is growing a few nasturtiums in pots out there every Summer.    

This is where we hang out and talk shit.

I never get tired of nasturtiums. You just cannot beat this intricate flower form - and the hummingbirds adore them!

Look how nicely this little bush form is draping!

This year The Biker presented me with a drilled-out plastic bucket he'd made and told me "Grow a vegetable dammit. You can do it." 

  So I took a white fingerling potato and set the eyes out. Lo and behold they grew.  If the tree rats don't rob me I might actually have enough in there to make a potato salad. We shall see at the end of the month.

Yeah, that's a rogue nasturtium growing in there with them. Yeah, they look ratty. It's late in the season and I've been culling the leaves as they turn yellow.  These were big, fluffy, tall plants there for awhile, though. 

WARNING: HONESTY

The loss of my garden was a huge blow. I feel it still. I couldn't even drive around the neighborhood that first summer, going past everyone's wonderful gardens in bloom, without crying. Lord how I wept. It was dumb.  I also felt cursed too. Like I was the kiss of death or something. No it doesn't make any sense. But I did.

Cursed or not, by the end of our first month in the apartment the windowsills were full of carrot tops, celery hearts and other things all rooted and growing in water glasses. I longed for a real houseplant, though; I mean, celery isn't ideal for that purpose, so I forced myself that first January to go to a good nursery and buy a ficus, figuring that I'd have to actively set a ficus on fire to kill it.

Anyway, I began to lavish a ridiculous amount of care on the ficus, and it has thanked me by continuing to be aggressively alive.

(BTW that is a picture of my husband's great grandfather in a hot rod that he built.)

Shortly thereafter I was at a garage sale and found a little spider plant that I made myself buy. Same rationale - I'd have to run over a spider plant to kill it, was my thought.  Well...it didn't go quite that way. The thing immediately began trying to climb out of its pot and nothing I could do made it happy. This was a big dramatic thing to me at the time.  After months of this, I finally took the last little crown, just  a little button of green, and set it in an egg cup full of water.  And look at this thing three years later!  

Variegated spider plant showing off it's pretty, silvery roots. This vase is sixteen inches high and made of lead crystal. Yes.  I bought my spider plant a mansion. 

And there we go.