Greenhorn Gardening, Year 2
Already Yielding Boons despite a Pair of Maroon Thumbs
Breakfast Setting, June 19, 2025--Okra pod from Spineless Okra plant, Yellow Squash, Rose de Bianca Eggplant, Apple-Green Egglplant, and Humongous first Cucumber of the year, adjoined by unripe Cherry Tomatoes and several kinds of Basil and Parsley.
June 19, 2025
Greenhorn Gardening, Year 2
On a color-scale, my Green Thumb sits around Maroon.
Southeast Louisiana, however, is kind toward growing things, whether they be Music or Okra.
You may remember last year’s two reports regarding Greenhorn Gardening in our front-yard in the Old Aurora sub-division on New Orleans’ West Bank. (The West Bank is in fact East of the Mississippi River as the River bisects New Orleans, relative to Maryse’s and my location, but in Northern and Southern windings of the this River (please do dip into Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississppi, a book enjoyed by my 1978 companion in roughnecking offshore, Bruce Mahan) through Louisiana, apart from its course through New Orleans, the West Bank is indeed toward the West, not the East, of the Mississippi. Clear as silt, or an Alligator’s Philosophy, right?)
Last year’s harvests amazed us. The plenitude of Tomatoes! Celebrity, Cherokee, Black Krim tomatoes—growing higher than our heads in the semi-circular garden, so enriched with green, before our window-seat!
We planted too many, closer together than 24 inches, and they burgeoned and tangled into a little jungle. What, however, “Production!”
Okra rose above even the Tomatoes! Emerald Green and Spineless Okra! Four plants that multiplied through offshoots from their sturdy trunks and sired/birthed more Okra! Bearing Pods like tapered fingers from May far into Autumn, a dozen Pods a day by October, and growing close to 15 feet tall.
Magnificent Okra!
Plus, Peppers of several kinds—Indian, Jalapeno, Bell, and especially proliferant Tabasco!
Plus, Cucumbers of length and girth and succulence exceeding any we could buy at even a Louisiana supermarket!
Plus, unforgettable surprise and bounty of Eggplants! Apple-Green Eggplants! Pot-Black Eggplants! Emerging and plumply dangling in their pots along front of our house, month after month, and So Good when slices of them were added to Beans or Salmon or anything that Maryse cooked.
Our friend Tasha is as essential as artistic a Primary Gardener, seated beside her “sinking” and curation of plants
This year we’ve been more stinting in our separation of Tomatoes in particular. No more hacking through the underbrush, this year. Still, their yield is already colorful and splendid. Colors like Cezanne’s apples and cheeks painted by Renoir—wot?
Luscious and delicious of an order, you know, again, beyond store-bought.
Okra, too, are coming strong! Five primary Plants a-growing and a-adding to their Stalks. Already giving up handfuls of Pods each morning!
And the Eggplants! As with this year’s Okra, one prodigy of plenty, “a Michael Jordan” among Eggplants, has leafed and widened in perfect symmetry its heightening. The purple-and-ivory of its fruit seem to us improvements above even last year’s. Its taste—or tastes—too! A morel-like density and flavor, with more to savor the more you chew!
Photo by Maryse from June 15.
Peppers await their turn into hot red.
The two front-yard Hibiscus have more than survived last December’s sub-freezing spell and last January’s spectacular and unprecedented Foot—of-Snow. They’re bigger—in particular the East (or is it West) of the pair.
Our Avocado is new to 2025, as the main tree did die through weeks of freezing and snow in our Global Warming (NOT) Winter, but it appears more numerous in its branches, more variegated in its leaves, than the two trees that “haven’t made it”, as Tasha says, in 2023 and 2024.
In short, let me report to encourage everyone, our modest but so blessed and satisfying efforts, are returning inestimably more than their expenditures of money (less than $500 spent by us in 2025, all-told, at the excellent Rose’s Garden Center of Marrero) and time.
Even with Maroon Thumbs!
Anyone can garden in southeast Louisiana! And I expect that “Gods’ green Earth”, as said in “The Sun Shines Through The Palms” song from San Diego, soon to be recorded with Rivers Answer Moons (KIRK JOSEPH is a gardener, too) will can be made to provide for anyone, almost everywhere, outdoors or inside!
Shouldn’t there again be natives’ Gardens in Gaza! Shouldn’t all the world have gardens free of threats from ‘A screaming … across the sky.’ (Thomas Pynchon)
Last year’s Home-grown Bounties lasted till the frost of December.
