I brought the orchid home a week ago. I'd been wanting an orchid for a long time; but they're expensive, so I kept putting it off. Last week we were in Flushing, in Chinatown/Koreatown, and we found a plant store that sold healthy, inexpensive orchids. So I got one. I'm not sure of its botanical name, the species, but I'll find out.
The urge to beautify has been growing. Six months here in the Bronx - a mostly uninhabited area, treeless with lots of medium-to-heavy industry (waterproofing, metal workers, plumbing, sanitaton, marble, newspaper, electrical, auto) - and the intensity of concrete and machinery and mystery warehousing gets to you. Not to mention the garbage on the street and the air quality.
The few houses on the block and the next block over are owned or rented by families who've been here a couple generations at least - Puerto Ricans and Italians. A few weeks ago, I was on the roof (we have a great roof), and I noticed it: the roof-deck garden growing two doors over. The matron of the house was growing everything you could imagine, huge lush climbing plants - green beans, tomatoes, lettuces - a veritable family farm. She uses contractor buckets and halved burn barrels as containers for these gorgeous plants. I was inspired. Time to bring some green, some life, into our place.
The first was narcissus. Bulbs given to me by a co-worker. They bloomed quickly, and died down just as quickly. Next, I brought home an herb planter - basil, oregano, and rosemary - for the window sill. So far, so good. Then, I discovered something called Cuban oregano, a fuzzy-leafed fragrant herb which is supposed to flower, but is also lovely just as foliage; and is apparently used in cooking and, most notably, in Mojitos, in Cuba. Also happy in the windowsill. The day after we got the orchid, J. brought home a compact flowering cactus. So we're enlivening the place, little by little.
Last night I worried, irrationally, that the orchid might be harmed... by the eardrum-busting building alarm that went off for hours across the street. It's sitting on the sill facing the street.
I should mention: I live here only part-time. The other part-time, I live in an 1840 farm-house in a rural area of northeastern Pennsylvania. There is no cell service, no high-speed internet, no postal delivery (I have a PO Box at the local general store), and no noises at all in the middle of the night...except for crickets and the occasional moth flying into the window. The house is on two acres, mostly wooded, and we recently built a garden (by "built," I mean a fence, to keep out the deer and bears). I live there half the week, and in the Bronx the other half.
It is a life in contrasts, to say the least. But not uninteresting. From this place - these places, shifting perspectives and vastly different experiences, week to week, day to day - is born this blog. Tales from the city and country.
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