Compost Studios

I’m sure if we put some of our family DNA under a microscope, we’d be able to see a green thread spiraling through its helix. That’s because I come from a long line of Greenies.

My grandfather immigrated to the United States from Italy, started a nursery and worked as a gardener. His customers and clients included some of the wealthiest estate owners in New York. My grandmother’s vegetable gardens were mounds that swelled up out of the backyard because she was so fond of composting and adding “good black dirt” to her planting. I like to think she invented raised beds. You didn’t have to bend over far to weed her garden.

My Italian mother could grow anything. The problem was her tendency to nurture ALL plant life meant that our yard was not only really green—it was really overgrown. My mom was reluctant to pull plants up for esthetic reasons or cut them back too much. The front door of my childhood home was virtually inaccessible due to out of control yews and other foundation shrubs. My mom’s groundcover beds were shrouded in mystery.

The family joke when I was growing up was that Jimmy Hoffa’s body was probably hidden in our pachysandra patch, which grew so thick and lush that it covered huge swathes of the side yard and was virtually impenetrable. It swallowed baseballs, toys, and evidence of my siblings illegal beer drinking. Mom’s plantings were like a botanical Bermuda Triangle.

My father, an Irishman, was not too interested in landscaping but he had a passion for organic gardening long before organic gardening was upscale and hip. When I was little I saw it as downscale and dirty. I still remember my shame when the trucks loaded with composted horse manure would show up at our suburban house and dump their loads. My dad would have all the kids out back, shoveling and spreading steaming manure piles across the garden. We were taught--and required--to weed by hand, tend the plants, and pick the produce, all tasks I DESPISED. My parents and grandparents might have been Greenies, but I’m a die-hard Brownie. To compensate for this genetic deficit, I married a Greenie and we have two Green offspring.

Yes, when my husband was fresh out of college, a hot young thing with bleached blonde hair, a killer tan and an athletic physique, he spent his spare time gardening. No it wasn’t sexy but it kept him off his motorcycle and out of the bars. Early on he grew vegetables but later his attention shifted to flowers. Given an opportunity, he’d cover every flat surface in the house with plants and spend every moment of daylight tending the yard.

When my parents died, E honored my mother’s memory by adopting her houseplants and transplanting a ton of plants from her yard to ours. Some people inherit china, silver, or antique furniture. Not us. We have vintage pachysandra and mint that originated with my grandparents in New York, was moved to my parents’ farm in Virginia and eventually landed in beds in my suburban yard. In the spring my mom’s yellow irises and pale pink peonies would bloom under my husband’s careful eye.

With my encouragement, E eventually became a Master Gardener and was one of the only men working with the women in the local garden clubs. He loved loading up his pickup truck with mulch, topsoil, plants, and tools. Just as he patiently followed me around the mall from time to time, I trailed behind him as he explored nurseries and gardens. He loved to talk tulips and brake for bulbs. When we visited Monet’s gardens last summer, he surreptitiously tapped a few flower heads and gathered some seeds in his pocket. He just couldn’t stop himself.

Our children, E-Grrrl and Mr. A, are equally enamored with gardening and plants. They have happily accompanied their dad on many a community gardening project and stuck by his side during his backyard gardening adventures. They have saved their allowance to buy plants and seeds and diligently watered and loved their plants. When we lived in Virginia, they had their own digging spot where they were permitted to plant whatever they wanted, however they wanted, whenever they wanted. Let’s just say they learned what NOT to do in tending their own corner of the yard.

My kids can’t suppress the urge to cultivate plant life. We have Christmas cacti in the house and their stalks are rather fragile. Every time a segment breaks off one, my son Mr. A sticks it in water and roots it, then plants it in whatever he can find. As a result, I have anemic, scraggly foundling plants in recycled containers all over the house.

Tender-hearted Mr. A is so passionate about plants that he begged us to buy all the potted herbs in the produce section of the grocery store because it upset him to think of people chopping at the plants and eating them one leaf at a time in their salads and stews. To him, this was just WRONG, a kind of plant abuse.

He is forever rescuing plants from their fates in the kitchen. I couldn’t make black beans and rice last night because my garlic bulbs had mysteriously disappeared. This morning I discovered that Mr. A had planted them and hidden the pots in the attic. At the grocery store last week, I bought him dry beans at his request so he could get them to sprout in Ziploc bags on the windowsill. Three days later, they’re doing just that. The boy is just like his father.

E-Man has been known to sigh at the sight of a soft potato with icky white eyes pushing out in all directions. Where I see spoiled produce, he sees the miracle of life. A recent series of incidents illustrates our differences in relating to plants all too well.

Last August, a friend gave us a giant homegrown avocado, and while I enjoyed mashing the pulp, seasoning it with garlic salt and eating it on bread or crackers, my Greenies were all excited over the big honking pit in the center. It was the size of a small lemon, and in their eyes it was swelling with potential.

Toothpicks were inserted into its sides, and it was suspended in a juice glass filled with water. For months it was an eye sore in the kitchen. The pit darkened, molded, and looked nothing less than disgusting. At least a dozen times I asked E to just toss the damn thing out, but no, he and the baby Greens were determined to see the avocado experiment to its end. Finally, after I was convinced that all that pit would ever do is produce mildew, a root snaked down into the water—in January!

The Greenies were all excited and promptly scrounged up an ugly pot to plant the pit in. Just as it had been suspended with its bottom in water and its top in the air for months, it now sits with its ass in the dirt and its moldy and cracked brown dome facing the ceiling.

On Monday, E gathered us all in the kitchen for what I thought would be a happy announcement involving going out to dinner. Instead he pointed to the half-assed avocado pit and exclaimed with reverence that it had finally sprouted.

I looked in vain for green leaves or shoots unfurling. No, even with my new glasses on, all I could see was a dirty brown stub emerging from its avocado ass crack.

I guess I should have been excited.

I should have shared the Greenies’ glee.

I should have hopped up and down, but what can I say? It’s not easy being Brown.

February 23, 2006