The Critique of Pure Seasoning: Pepperfest!

My uncle Bob is an avid gardener that lives in Denver. His back yard is lined with herbs, pepper plants, tomato plants, carrots, onions, zucchini, and a raspberry bush. Every autumn Bob hosts 'Pepperfest'. It's a sort of autumn harvest, an all day party built around the garden and its yield. Salsas, sauces, rubs, and spice mixtures are all made out of Bob's tomatoes, peppers and herbs...most of the rest of the vegetables in the garden simply get roasted and set on the table. Bob cooks ribs, grills chicken, and smokes brisket for three days prior. He's been doing this for a few years now, but I've never been able to make it out to Colorado for the big event. This year, however, my parents were going, and Pepperfest fell right in the middle of a two week period during which I was...wait for it...visiting my parents. So, although I do wish that being at my uncle's house didn't always involve the constant background drone of Fox News, I finally got the chance to get out to Colorado and see the product of some really skilled gardening.

I was attending Pepperfest for reasons besides simply seeing the family. My visit was subsequent to my having spent the summer gardening for the first time. It was an enjoyable, rewarding, and educational experience, and I actually made a lot of things come out of the ground. Enough, at least, for people to act impressed by the garden. However, I would like to actually be gardening well, and to be doing it sooner rather than later. So part of my reason for making sure to get to Denver was to witness Bob at work.

This past spring, I planted a garden on my roof...which isn't actually a roof. It's more an overhang, which hangs-over my neighbor's porch. Sounds fishy, potentially dangerous, I know, but it's shown itself to be very sturdy. Since it's the closest I've got to a balcony, and since it probably is bigger and gets more sun then most balconies, I decided a year ago that I wanted a garden out on the 'roof'. So I grew flowers, tomatoes, basil, chives, and parsley from seed, and I potted some pre-grown mint, sage, oregano and thyme. I grew them all in pots, obviously. I was praised by some for growing as many things from seed as I did, but this never made sense to me. Growing from seed was easy, especially using a greenhouse (when spring roles around and I repeat the process of using a greenhouse, I'll surely document the process here). In fact, everything that I grew in a greenhouse grew up to be healthy and lush, while everything I tried to plant directly into a pot never materialized. Meanwhile, I found the simple re-potting of plants purchased at Lowe's to be barely satisfying.

In late July I got a distressed voicemail from my landlord, reporting that she had gotten an angry voicemail from my building's owner. Apparently there had been a leak in the overhang, the owner had driven by, seen my garden, and become convinced that there was no other explanation, so he called my landlord huffing and puffing, and expressing the desire to charge me for the leak. The next day a maintenance bloke stopped by to caulk up the leak, and he intimated to us that the leak was surely just a natural result of an old structure, and that the garden had nothing to do with it. He must have communicated that to the owner, because we never again heard heads or tails of the ordeal. But it was enough to scare me off of future roof gardening...which is a real shame! The hortulan potential of that roof was one of the greatest appeals of this apartment when I signed the lease back in the autumn of 2009. But this may a blessing in disguise, because I may ultimately be able to have a bigger, more varied, and more successful garden some other way as a result. In the process of dismantling my roof garden, I moved my tomato plants to a friend's backyard. My friend's huge, overgrown, spacious and sunny but unkempt backyard. My friend's someone-should-really-come-along-and-groom-me-and-then-start-planting-things-in-me backyard. My friend (whose name is Emelie) and I have since talked about how fun it would be to make a concerted effort next spring to clean up that yard and plant a garden. And it could be huge! Even if we didn't have the energy or time to maintain the entire thing, we could still "let a thousand flowers bloom" and see what turned out well and what died tragically. And the yard would still look better than it does now.

So...my hope is that in March 2011 I will be engaged in (a) tearing up a friend's back yard in order to put it back together, and (b) stocking my greenhouse with flowers, tomatoes (including, I hope, heirloom and cherry tomatoes), peppers (the bell kind and a few of the hot kinds), eggplants, green onions, garlic, zucchini, basil, parsley, chives, thyme, sage, oregano, rosemary and perhaps some chamomile or lavender. Then, after some heavy planting weekends in early May...this, at least, is the pipe dream.

So seeing Bob's garden was particularly exciting. Below are some pictures. I include them because (and this is really the point of this meandering narrative) herein lies the inspiration for the garden I'm vaguely hoping to construct in 8-9 months. Of course, one thing I haven't said much about is the food...and there was a lot of food. I gained 12 pounds that day. Literally. I worked out that morning, weighed myself afterwards, and I weighed x pounds. That evening, for fun, I weighed myself in the scale in Bob's bathroom and weighed y pounds. y-x=12. I am not kidding or exaggerating.