My Rooftop Gardening Efforts

I've always been a very neglectful plant-parent, but at the same time, I really like having plants. This year, I was determined to keep plants alive outside on the deck, so I interrogated the nursery employees to make sure that I only bought plants that love the full sun. I also reined in Josh's tendency to choose plants without any regard to the conditions that they require from their growing environment.

I've managed to keep the little deck community alive this year for more than two months (go me!). I'm ridiculously proud of this fact. Here is a picture of some of my charges, thriving:



I also decided to follow in my dad's footsteps and plant a tomato out there. He gave me some soil additives to get the little guy started off right in life. Now it has taken over its pot:



And here is my very first tomato:



These pictures were taken one day ago, so I can't report yet on how the tomato tastes. I can tell you that my investment in the plant and the equipment (pot with water reservoir, special soil, cage, ground cover, and fertilizer) totaled $50. This means that that one tiny tomato cost $50.

I plan to keep track of my tomato harvest and when it is over, I will calculate the cost per tomato (CPT... in DC, you're nothing without an acronym) and report back. The plant has lots of flowers at the moment, so I am hopeful that the CPT will soon drop below $50.

*I recently decided that my blog needs more photos, and this is my first attempt at bringing my life in pictures to the internets. Next up will be a photo essay on my toenail that got torn off a few months ago.

So... It's Been A While

Instead of a lengthy sum-up type post, I will leave you with the following:

Today on the metro, I sat down when some seats opened up at Metro Center. A fat woman followed me right into the seats, so I got stuck with her on the outside. I am really not sure why she followed me, given that I was ahead of her and moving on a clear trajectory toward those particular seats. Plenty of other seats were open. Sometimes I think that if fat metro riders sense that the train is crowded enough that they will have to sit next to someone, they look for the skinniest butt to park alongside. You know, to look for someone who, like me, might not physically need the entire seat cushion (my psychological need not to feel someone else's ass fat pressed against my own is another story entirely).

Anyway. She was next to me and I was doing my best to sit tall and get my bag onto my lap so that it wouldn't take up any space between my body and the wall of the train. As I was shifting things around beside the wall of the train, a newspaper dislodged and revealed some very strange artifacts lying on the seat frame next to me. In fact, I found it so unbelievable that I did a double-take. Sure enough, they were nail clippings both times.

I'm not one of those people who gets her knickers in a wad over the tendency of other people to perform routine bodily maintenace tasks on the metro (makeup application, hair styling, nail polishing), but I did think that leaving nail clippings behind represented a new and humorous low. I was thinking that it's too bad that I'm not a member of elite law enforcement, because if I were, I could have taken those nail clippings, analyzed their DNA, and possibly identified the offender. Then I could have mailed the clippings to the culprit's house along with a threatening note telling them to clean up after themselves when grooming in public. I wonder how badly I would freak out if I were on the receiving end of a note like that?

Back to the fat woman next to me. I noticed that the seats around us emptied fully one time and she did not get up, as many people do, to take a set of two seats all to herself. I made a bet with myself that this was a bad sign and that she would probably not take well to getting up to let me out when it was my turn. She finally settled in to a comfortable, newspaper-extended position as we pulled into Dupont Circle. Too bad for her, because I had to get out at Woodley Park. I said, "Excuse me," as the train pulled into Woodley, and you should have seen the dirty look I got! It said something along the lines of, "You have got to be kidding me. You want me to stand up now?! Damn, I hate to move around." She got up very nimbly, though.