Exit Tears, Enter Terra Cotta

I don't want to be inside today. I've been inside for two days, in the same pajama pants, listening to this song . Always this song. For two days. For crying out loud, someone get this girl out to the garden and give her a shovel.

Or maybe get her to the potting table and give her a spade. Yeah. We could work on the container garden. We could stretch out under the sun and get our fingers dirty and breathe in all the green and sigh very loudly.

Sounds nice. Let's do that.

I went to Dallas Wednesday. While I was there I stopped at Calloway's. If your journey ever takes you to Dallas, stop at the Calloway's on Greenville Avenue. It's my favorite green place in Big D, next to the Farmer's Market and the Arboretum. The orchid aisle will take your breath away.

While at Calloway's, I found some unusual herbs. Coconut Thyme? I have English Thyme and Lemon Thyme and Creeping Thyme, but who knew there was Coconut Thyme? Not me. It tastes very... Caribbean. I think it would be nice with chicken. Or maybe risotto... a coconut milk risotto. Or something like this, although I would never, ever make it, scared to death as I am of seafood ever since I threw up on a U. S. Senator after eating shrimp that one time.

Ahem.

Oh, and there were new (to me) varities of mint. A Candy Mint. (That's it... in the bottom right of the picture above.) Member of the spearmint family. It's sweet and yummy. I'm tucking one into a pot and hoping the other goes crazy in a partially sun/slightly damp area of my garden. Then, when I'm working in the garden, I could leave a note on the front door that says: In the Candy Mint patch. Come on back. And that would be a charming sign to come across, wouldn't it?

A lot of interested folks ask where I get my plants. Truth is, I buy very few actual plants, preferring to start many things from seed. Seed Savers is a favorite of mine. So is Pinetree Garden Seeds. If it's berries you're wanting, you won't beat Nourse Farms. And of course, digging around your local feed store or garden center is always productive. Yes, if you have the time and patience, gardening from seed is ideal. It's cheaper, for one, and when you buy seed you have access to a whole new world of heirloom and hard-to-find varities. And if it doesn't work... if the tomatoes are sour or the flowers are sickly or the herbs fry in the heat... you've lost... what? A dollar and a quarter?

Besides, when you start things from seed you get to buy all the Italian terra cotta pots. Even discount stores have them. For another dollar or two, you can hold a piece of Italy in your hands. For those of us who won't be getting to Tuscany any time soon, that'll have to do.

Most of the pots I have are very new... with the exception of the three big ones I found underneath Freeman House. But you'd never know it by looking at them. Here's the trick: whenever you bring pots home from the store, remove their stickers and rub them down with moist dirt. I mean, scrub them with damp potting soil. Then fill them with soil for a week or two. Water them. Kick them around. Slather others with expired yogurt or buttermilk and let them sit in the shade for a few weeks. Water those and kick them around, too. Then let time and moisture do the rest. It all sounds violent and cruel, I know, but it works. Take that one in the upper right corner of the picture below. I just got it last March and it was shiny terra cotta new. I gave it a buttermilk bath and it already has that aged look I love.

What is it about being in the garden... about soft, green plants and heat-baked pots and dark, loamy soil and sunshine... that can quiet even the most battered and raging of hearts?

I'm not sure what it is, but I'm grateful for it. So thanks, Lord, for our pots and our gardens - however and wherever they may be. And today, please...

Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind -
Thy windy will to bear.
-Emily Dickinson