Before I launch into my embarrassing admission of having a brown thumb and garden envy, allow me to explain the meaning of “envy.” Envy can be a verb or a noun.
“I envy your fleur-de-lis tomato plant stakes” is incorrect. “I envy your enviable fleur-de-lis tomato plant stakes” is correct. Envy is used as a verb describing my emotion, and enviable is the adjective describing the aforementioned stakes. “She was filled with envy when she saw the neat rows of red oak leaf lettuce and lacinato kale bursting through the Bridgehampton loam” is a nifty example of envy as a noun.
Envy is not the same as jealousy, or covetousness. Envy is a reaction to lacking something (beautiful, healthy plants for instance) and jealousy would be having those plants but fearing they will be taken away from you. Covetousness is the desire for, and unattainability of, something that is not yours, say, for instance, a green thumb.
I have been incorrectly using all of these words and tossing them out willy-nilly, interchangeably, like a packet of mesclun seeds in an undefined patch of ground, all my life.
I have garden envy and garden insecurity. It wouldn’t matter if my epic failures were in the privacy of my own backyard (and they are there), but my “garden” plot is in a community garden at Bridge Gardens in Bridgehampton. I am the new kid on the block and I am already intimidated by the glorious beauty, bounty, and organizational abilities of the other plot leasers. Even after the cold, rainy spring there are trellises, tuteurs, and stakes, sturdy, delicate, and artful and with purpose! They are already covered with beans and peas. There are glistening dark green mounds of spinach, full rows of heads of lettuce, massive quantities of cilantro and parsley.
I fear my failures will be there for all to see. I don’t know why I assume I will fail, God knows I have attended plenty of vegetable garden workshops, bought the right seeds and plants, interviewed experts, and got the right muckety-muck shoes. I am impatient and overly ambitious, combined with being unorganized and slothful. (There seem to be a lot of biblical deadly sins here. . . .) It is frustrating mostly because I am a cook. I know what to do with just about every single thing that can grow in an East End garden. I just don’t trust my own abilities to grow those things. But I’m gonna try.
Here is what I have planted so far, with little regard to rows, height, staking, raised beds, or water requirements: lots of herbs like thyme, sage, tarragon, lemongrass, lemon verbena, cilantro, basil, and sorrel. There are three tomato plants, some nasturtiums (I make pesto with the leaves), jalapeno peppers, the willy-nilly lettuce patch, and lacinato or dinosaur kale. This is the only kale I like. Here’s what you do with it: remove stems, then cut into thin strips. Massage these with lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper. Before serving add chopped dried apricots and chopped Marcona almonds. I just made kale palatable for you. You’re welcome!
Rick Bogusch is the man in charge of all of Bridge Gardens. He has many green thumbs, is a marvelous cook, and is a friend. As he walked by my hunched over body stuffing vanilla marigolds into the ground, he said, “So, you’re going to try doing it that way?” When I turned around to acknowledge that yes, no doubt I was doing it wrong, he probably observed an expression on my face similar to the one in Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” He laughed and said that’s his line for all the new gardeners, just to get such a reaction. Phew.
I can already tell that some of my “fellow gardeners” have tricks up their sleeves, rather like some chefs in New Orleans restaurants who are so secretive about their Cajun and Creole spice mixes that they keep them in their chef’s coat pockets and sprinkle directly into the étouffées and gumbos so nobody else can see what their magic formula is. One nice fella in the plot next to mine told me that he is the Tomato Man. I gave him the Woodward-Bernstein treatment until he confessed to bone meal and Epsom salts. When? How much? I did not get all the answers.
When I was married and living in Alexandria, Va., my husband and I had a community garden plot underneath the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. I recall looking up at the hundreds of thousands of cars passing directly overhead all day and all night and thinking, “That can’t be good.” We grew beautiful tomatoes, tiny cornichon pickles, string beans, lettuces, and zucchini. There was squabbling over water rights, thievery, and definitely non-organic practices going on. The greatest sins were garden abandonment midseason and allowing weeds to take over. This venial sin would result in denial of a plot the following season. My husband did all of the garden work; I would pick and cook. I would also make friends in the community plot and barter with the other members. One gentleman would share his figs with me and I would return most of them transformed into Lee Bailey’s Aunt Freddie’s fig jam.
I hope I can become a successful, knowledgeable, and mindful gardener; it would just go so nicely with my love of cooking. Maybe I will get to know the other plot members and I can barter with them. Maybe someday I will no longer be envious of other’s enviable bounty. Even better, maybe someday I will be able to help another beginner gardener as he or she tentatively amends the soil and awaits the sprouts that will someday become delicious and nutritious food.