Network Gardening
Down in the Florida sun, Penn Humphries dropped his pencil and snapped off the television. "Afghanistan," he exclaimed to his wife, "who would ever have imagined we’d be fighting in Afghanistan? If there was ever a place we had absolutely no connection with, I would have thought that Afghanistan was it. He collected his lists and catalogs and moved to the phone.
"Hello, Doris? Listen, are you doing pimentos from seed again this year? Want to trade for either an upright radicchio or some determinate, potato-leafed, heirloom tomatoes called "Yellow Brandywine"? Yeah, we’ll be up next week and hope to see you then. My best to your old man. Tell him not to hurt himself shoveling the walk."
Doris Wunderlich wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and examined the cardboard egg cartons on the window-sill. Celery was coming up like lawn. What was she ever to do with it all? In dismay she glanced around at the other windows, hoping to find six inches of bright space unfilled. She reached for her wall phone and pressed the auto-dial button.
"Melanie, how’s your daughter? February fifteenth, she’s due, isn’t it? I know. My first was the hardest. Listen, my window sill is full of seedling celery and I’m wondering what to do with it all. I remember you had that wonderful early lettuce last year. Well, whether you have it or not, I’d be glad if you’d take some of my babies off my hands. Right. That’s right. Right. Awww! And we could stop somewhere for lunch. Tuesday?"
Melanie Choi tapped her pencil on the pad at her desk. When she lifted her receiver, she noted that there were messages waiting. But first, "Mother-in-law," she said, "Melanie here. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, he is well and asks for you always. I will bring him on the weekend, but just now I was thinking that you might want some American celery seedlings. I can get them from a friend, who has too many. Yes, American, you know, tall with thin leaves only at the top. Ridges running along the outside of the stalk. Soft, so don’t cook it too long, but it has a certain flavor. They say it is soothing to the spirit. Yes. Of course. And I will have soon Deer Tongue lettuce. These things you can plant out in the earth next month. I will tell Danny to come dig your garden for you. You saw him just this week, of course he is well. I will. I will. Yes. I will tell my friend you will send her a "Sun Jewel" melon when the weather is warmer."
At the produce market, old Mrs. Choi examined American celery. Well, this was the new land, and she was not too old to try new things a little bit. During the week the market was quiet and she could idle along at her own speed and sometimes she met fellow customers doing the same. Over the years, she had developed acquaintance with certain ones. Mr. Khan always wore a hat, showing that he was from somewhere, too, and he had six grand-children. Very good. He often asked her questions in his staccato English about the many strange vegetables, which were offered. "Jicama," was a mystery to both of them. Here they called shunkyo, the long radish, by the Japanese "Daikon," which Mr. Das called "moolee," or something like. Last year he had given her several pepper plants, which had produced long, red fruit with something like the pungency she remembered from her parents home, long ago and far away.
"A good morning to you," he greeted her in the line to pay.
"Ah, ah," she said, "I was just thinking of who might help me use up extra seed of machiaw. She rummaged in her purse. Mr. Khan opened the folded paper she gave him and examined the flat seeds with interest.
"And this thing, what might it be?" he inquired. At a loss for the name, she stepped across the shop and pointed to a dark, purple eggplant.
"Only, long," she held her hands a foot apart, "and thin like this," she showed him an inch and a half with her fingers. "Not dark like those, but very good. Very good. You can not get it in this kind of store." He was all smiles as he folded the packet again. Neither of them regarded a folded paper as an unusual way to keep small items.
Mr. Khan spoke in his earnest manner. "My mother-cousin is just coming from Lahore. It is very bad there." They both looked grave for a moment. "And he is bringing me seed of our Moghuli kheera. He reached into the inner pocket of his coat for a small plastic bag. From the bag, he extracted a long envelope. The envelope contained a smaller envelope, very worn and marked in foreign script. Opening it, Mr. Khan spilled forth a handful of narrow, melon-type seeds. Mrs. Choi looked with a knowing eye. "These are the genuine Kabuli kheera, brought to Lahore by a refugee my mother-cousin helped. They will grow over a fence or along the earth during the hot season," he explained. "The fruit are so," he extended his arm and marked above the elbow. Very sweet tasting, with bitter skin. On the ground they will curl like a snake, but hanging, they will be straighter. In the heat, they are very refreshing with salt and the powder of hot chillies." She thanked him, then it was her turn to pay.
"Melanie Choi gave me some cucumber seed she got from her mother-in-law," Doris told Penn, when he came over in March to bring her little radicchio plants in newspaper cups, which he made himself with some gizmo he had bought. Together they peered at the cut-off milk cartons full of starting-mix on her windowsill. "When they come up, I’ll give you one, if you like."
"Sure, dandy," Penn said gratefully. "It’s the sharing that makes it possible to have so many things in the garden every year. The world’s one big garden, if you look at it right and gardeners are a sort of big family, aren’t they?"
appeared February, 2002