Thursday, September 20, 2007

the fruits of neglect



As I am sure my total neglect of corespondance has proven, I have been excessively busy these days. We're putting up an oversized production of King Lear involving blood, eyeballs and gobs and gobs of laundry. Yesterday I did eight loads of laundry!!! One of my washing machines broke so I was at work until 2:30am. That was most unhappy. Today I was going to be a good costumer and replace collars for my show at the Aurora but looking at how long that will take, I've opted to let them suffer one more day and go buy a new shirt tomorrow... thus giving me time finally to post a blog. Today I've finally got a little time to spend at home, cook myself breakfast and water the "garden".

I am perpetually amazed by the fecundity of Berkeley. Outside my gate we have several oak barrels that my landlady bought when she lived in the big house in front. We inherited some tomato plants from her, my neighbor planted a chili pepper and I planted basil. All of us are pretty lax about actually caring for the plants. I water them once every three days or so. Now we have more tomatoes than we can eat, a basil plant that needs pruning every time I think about it and chili peppers on the way (they are supposed to be red, so I think they've got a little more growing to do). In my hometown (Idyllwild) we worked and fretted and carefully nurtured our gardens and were lucky to get potatoes, beans and rhubarb. It seems like we don't deserve to have this many tomatoes because we neglect them so much, but I am so happy to have them anyway. A tomato and basil salad is a nice snack to have when you're tired from washing up a yucky mess of stage blood. Will try to post more soon.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This year we have tomatos and rubarb, as well as some okra and 2 squash. Yes, I wish we had better (or real) soil and good growing conditions. DOD