Thrown From the Nest



Happy Spring!
all photos this post: Allison Glasgow

Cursed, searched and longed for, Spring has finally graced New York City. Not without complication, but rebirth is rarely easy.

Sam promptly rejected the first hints of fresh air with a high fever lasting five days. My husband was out of town, leaving me to spin between late night phone harassing of the pediatrician and detailing snot rashes to my mother all on my  pitiable lonesome.

Somewhat irrationally I wanted to catch this virus, believing it to be the only way to understand what he was feeling. So Sam and I dozed wrapped together like mummies in the dim tomb of my apartment for the better part of a week. Sick baby is my worst heartache. Stress coupled with insomniac monitoring of little-bodied thick breaths likely increased my susceptibility, and when Sam emerged to health, I came down with neon eyes. Not pink eye. Neon, alien, orange... too hideous to speak of really. A condition that left us marooned for yet another week.

Meanwhile the Spinach has been sulking. Coiling and shrugging and ignoring the sun. I read in a gardening book that once the "true leaves" emerge, it is time to begin some sort of plant food. All my seedlings have had true leaves for weeks, most have cheerfully carried on building height and girth in their tiny peat pellets, but Spinach rebelled and demanded new digs. Working from rumor, minute knowledge and impatience, I have declared that Spinach doesn't need much soil and might be the perfect candidate for experimental vertical gardening. I found this very cool You Tube video with a guy growing lettuces out of pop bottles:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uDbjZ9roEQ

I figured I would give it a try. If you watch the video, you will notice that his bottles are not the typical American 20 oz that I had been collecting from my husband's minor diet soda addiction and there is no way in hecks I am coaxing 2 liters into my life, so I raided our cluttered cabinet for substitutes. I have some concerns about plastic, but these Chinese takeout soup containers have a recyclable code of 5, which I understand means they are reusable and heat resistant. Plus they have lids that will help them stack.

I cut a hole in each of the lids, one on the side, and finally one on the bottom. The bottom hole is very large to allow drainage from each container to the next, and hopefully properly water all the compartments. I realize only now that as per usual, I disregarded most instruction in the video and that large drainage hole is perhaps not ideal. Alas.


Sam checks in a dolly to the Spinach motel!
Note said snot-rash. Poor baby.

Grouchy Spinach perks at a new Home

I also cut two little holes on the backside of each container and thread a zip tie through before adding soil. These containers need to hang on something and I had the foresight--OK not foresight exactly, more concluded through experimentation as Sam's reclamation of the planters as apartments for his little toy friends--that the planters are quite unstable and cannot be expected to hold the weight of the next, so each must be individually attached to the support (in our case, a no longer needed baby gate).

The idea is that the little sprouts will be planted directly into the large opening on the side, but this proved extremely difficult. Do I add the soil first, or just stick the Spinach in and pack around it? Not to mention that these little plants were unhealthy and quite delicate. The giant hole in the bottom proved unwieldy, spilling dirt as quickly as I could shovel it. And I had serious reservations about the drainage/irrigation system. I did eventually plant the Spinach, only to hyper water it, waiting anxiously for the tell-tale condensation of moisture to travel to the very bottom container. 

So the Spinach has been ejected from the comforts of my home. Now that the sprouts are adhered to the baby gate on the balcony, they can't come back in. Of course, I set up this quite fragile and precarious plan and THEN checked the weather...tremendous rain for the next two days. Oops. Even with the forecast promising demise, I decided the Spinach deserved company. Out went the Beans, out went the Tomato and out went the Peas.

"To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.” ~Pema Chodron. 

I am sure of this truth of motherhood. I only hope the same can be said of plants.

The farm dressed for sunshine

  

The farm dressed for rainstorms