It's March, and snowy, and thus the perfect time to contemplate whether or not to do a garden this year. I'd like to pretend I have free will, but unfortunately, growing plants is buried deep in my genes.
My family tree on my father’s side is blooming with green thumbs. Naturally gifted with the superhuman ability to spot stinging nettle at a hundred paces, and also born with the knowledge that said stinging nettle is terrific for treating arthritis, gout, stomach upset, and anemia in cows (and probably humans, too, Dad says), the Longos were destined to make their living off the land from the moment they got on the boat in Italy, setting sail for America.
What the Longos do not have is a decent sense of direction. Hopelessly geographically challenged, the Longo fate was forever sealed when my great-great- grandfather, Giuseppe Longo, got on that boat bound for Ellis Island thinking it was a charter to Oahu. When he stepped onto the pier in New York in the middle of December, his dreams of becoming a successful pineapple farmer should have withered and died right then, carried away by an icy blast of negative-six-degree wind. But no: Giuseppe was not a quitter. Instead of trying to find another boat to take him somewhere warmer, old can’t-find-his-way-out-of-a-paper-bag Giuseppe had the bright idea to walk south. He and his wife Josephine hit the road, immediately heading northeast.
They ultimately collapsed on the side of a meandering dirt path somewhere in central Connecticut. “I hate it here!” Josephine declared. “The soil’s rocky, it’s so cold I can’t feel my face, and the pineapple will not grow here, my darling.” (Josephine was a loving, yet sensible, old bird.)
“Then we shall raise Holsteins!” Giuseppe announced. “Holsteins love cold weather and rocky ground. Look over there, Josephine: a whole field full of stinging nettles covered in snow! Welcome to our new home.”
Unfortunately for Josephine, divorce was not widely acceptable back in the eighteen hundreds, and she was stuck. She helped tend the farm, and bore Giuseppe many, many farmhands—er, children—who were forced to join him in his passion of having a successful dairy farm.
Was it successful? Eh.
What it did have was a lovely garden, thanks to Josephine. She watched the weather and tested different seeds in the soil, and soon intuited what plants would thrive, and which would die horrible deaths in their new homeland. She had some false starts, mind you (rest in peace, bougainvillea brought all the way across the Atlantic in Josephine’s loving arms, only to turn black and disintegrate less than a week in the new world), but soon, she had a lovely mix of flowers and vegetables surrounding their shack, from petunias and peonies to bell peppers and radishes. Josephine toiled every day in her beloved garden, coaxing buds to bloom, weeding away the stupid stinging nettles that threatened to take over the peony beds by the hour, lovingly flicking away the green worms that dared to place a single horned foot on her blushing tomatoes.
Then a freak frost hit in early August, killing everything except the nettles.
Should you even bother trying to grow a garden in New England?
Eh.
My family tree on my father’s side is blooming with green thumbs. Naturally gifted with the superhuman ability to spot stinging nettle at a hundred paces, and also born with the knowledge that said stinging nettle is terrific for treating arthritis, gout, stomach upset, and anemia in cows (and probably humans, too, Dad says), the Longos were destined to make their living off the land from the moment they got on the boat in Italy, setting sail for America.
What the Longos do not have is a decent sense of direction. Hopelessly geographically challenged, the Longo fate was forever sealed when my great-great- grandfather, Giuseppe Longo, got on that boat bound for Ellis Island thinking it was a charter to Oahu. When he stepped onto the pier in New York in the middle of December, his dreams of becoming a successful pineapple farmer should have withered and died right then, carried away by an icy blast of negative-six-degree wind. But no: Giuseppe was not a quitter. Instead of trying to find another boat to take him somewhere warmer, old can’t-find-his-way-out-of-a-paper-bag Giuseppe had the bright idea to walk south. He and his wife Josephine hit the road, immediately heading northeast.
They ultimately collapsed on the side of a meandering dirt path somewhere in central Connecticut. “I hate it here!” Josephine declared. “The soil’s rocky, it’s so cold I can’t feel my face, and the pineapple will not grow here, my darling.” (Josephine was a loving, yet sensible, old bird.)
“Then we shall raise Holsteins!” Giuseppe announced. “Holsteins love cold weather and rocky ground. Look over there, Josephine: a whole field full of stinging nettles covered in snow! Welcome to our new home.”
Unfortunately for Josephine, divorce was not widely acceptable back in the eighteen hundreds, and she was stuck. She helped tend the farm, and bore Giuseppe many, many farmhands—er, children—who were forced to join him in his passion of having a successful dairy farm.
Was it successful? Eh.
What it did have was a lovely garden, thanks to Josephine. She watched the weather and tested different seeds in the soil, and soon intuited what plants would thrive, and which would die horrible deaths in their new homeland. She had some false starts, mind you (rest in peace, bougainvillea brought all the way across the Atlantic in Josephine’s loving arms, only to turn black and disintegrate less than a week in the new world), but soon, she had a lovely mix of flowers and vegetables surrounding their shack, from petunias and peonies to bell peppers and radishes. Josephine toiled every day in her beloved garden, coaxing buds to bloom, weeding away the stupid stinging nettles that threatened to take over the peony beds by the hour, lovingly flicking away the green worms that dared to place a single horned foot on her blushing tomatoes.
Then a freak frost hit in early August, killing everything except the nettles.
Should you even bother trying to grow a garden in New England?
Eh.
Can you spot the tomato plants in this picture?
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