Panthy's Garden

What do you do when an icon is about to vanish? A famous building about crumble? The last piece of Entenmann’s raspberry danish twist about to be eaten?! You PRESERVE it, at all costs.

I don’t have to tell you how serious the situation is with Panthy, just look at the picture. For the love of god, his leg muscles are literally turning into hour glass sand! Time. Is. Running. Out.

Internship candidate James found a great solution: a newer, LARGER Panther.

But there’s really only one Panthy. My pal Chrissie had a better idea. … “I think you should have Panthy bro……” I didn’t even let her finish her sentence before I was on Kickstarter penning my proposal. It was three flowery paragraphs long but the bottom line was this: Panthy must be bronzed.

It didn’t take them long to reject my proposal, 20 minutes tops. Maybe it was that grammatical error. Or maybe there was no mention of a tree house for disabled kids. Which is not a bad idea actually. Lots of ramps. And wide doors. It’d be accessible to everyone. I promise I’m not trying to be a dick. It’d be a loving and nurturing environment and we could have a garden up there!

Anyway, the measly $150 dollars I need will have to be raised elsewhere. Kickstarter missed the boat but I’ve got plans, big plans. And you know what Panthy? I’m not letting you down brother. You hear me? No goddamn way.

Today was a good day. I walked into and out of a garden center without making a single purchase. Making. Progress. With my addiction. Then I went and bought a bottle of bourbon with a belt buckle on it. Everything is fine.

Know what else made it a great day? The insect cavalry arrived. After three weeks of waiting and two calls where I had to break out my best You Stepped On My Jordans attitude, a small box arrived. Inside were some stryofoam peanuts and a mesh bag with a twitchy black carpet of angry ladybugs inside.

According to the instructions (printed in Comic Sans), I had to wait till after dark to release the insect hounds. With a tiny flashlight in my mouth I cut the bag open and shook out the ladybugs into the black void under the branches of my vegetable patch. Under the cover of darkness, the assault was launched.

It was awesome, like releasing a tiny robot army hell-bent on aphid destruction. I sat there watching for a good half hour, thinking about every three minutes that somehow an something had crawled into my ear or up my nose.

With North Korean-like precision, the ladybugs combed every square inch of each leaf, stopping from time to time to EAT APHID FACES. It was nuts. Adding insult to injury, each tiny bite was accompanied by a small humping motion. Damnnnn…..

I saved the rest for two more waves to be launched later this week. Closing the bag was nearly impossible, they were streaming out, running over my hands and down my arms. Finally I got it shut with some duct tape, smashing this poor fella in the process. The insect war rages on but his sacrifice will not be forgotten.

A while back I told you that when it comes to gardening, listen carefully to the old ladies. They know things; things not fully covered by the internet. When it comes to selecting appropriate slacks to wear to Sunday services, ignore them. If they offer you dessert in the form of candied melons, do not accept. Old ladies aren’t good for everything.

This video was tucked down in my little Liked Posts feed but I’m guessing you’ve flown right past it drinking up every dull word of my previous posts. So here it is again, full-size and ready for your attention. Sit up straight, and listen carefully:

Lovingly plucked from Grasshopper Sense.

Panthy’s Garden is a place of tiny miracles, like this precious bundle of miniature grapes.

Or like this adolescent Casper eggplant.

Or this tiny squirrel poop.

It’s a miracle that I’m still alive after drinking three-day-old “ice” coffee while doing my morning rounds everyday. Or that from my roof I can see a pro basketball stadium being built for the BROOKLYN NETS, a team owned by a Russian billionaire and Jay Z.

It’s a miracle that my Vans have listened to my feet and provided some extra ventilation for them.

And it’s a miracle that I can bear witness to a tiny part of the natural world dooking it out in miniature. Check it:

After reading the internet for 15 minutes I feel I can speak intelligently about what’s going on here. On the underside of this here leaf is the trifecta of garden insect combatants: aphids, a ladybugs (in limited edition larval colorway) and an ANT.

The aphids excrete a sugary substance on the leaves which the ants like to eat. The ants… (ready for this?) actually herd them around, using them for their sugary secretions. Uh… right, moving along….

The ladybugs eat the aphids and then fly off to cast magical spells on sleeping babies and Golden Retriever puppies. It really is magical but frankly I’d rather they all just fucked off. Notice that leaf is dead; a victim of tiny, annoying miracles.

Groggy and barely caffeinated I stumbled into Panthy’s Garden for the usual morning rounds yesterday. Sitting right there on my handsomely refinished deck table was a tiny declaration of war: a dug up bulb.

Up until now, there had been no evidence of the squirrels that regularly tormented me last summer, the little furry bastards that would take one bite of an heirloom tomato and leave the rest to rot in the summer heat.

It’d be like taking one bite of a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich and leaving the rest on the deck to rot. Or rather a bite from a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich of a rare and ancient variety, GROWN FROM SEED and fawned over for weeks, with ONE bite taken out of it. Like it wasn’t that good?! Are you nuts?! Those are delicious!! You can taste the heritage!!

To say it was devastating would make me look crazy. But, it was, and yes, I am. The last time I held one of these molested tomatoes I made a promise: If they come back next year, I’m going to trap them, ride them across the Gowanus Canal on my bike and leave them in their new home to think about what they’ve done. Let it begin.

When I was 8 I picked out my own clothes. Among my favorite ensembles was a pair of electric blue stirrup pants and a maroon velour sweatshirt… with a rhinestone fish on the front.

I pick plants the way an 8 year old picks clothes. I picked a tall grass because it makes a swooshy noise in the wind. I picked a coneflower because it was orange and I like orange stuff. And now that they’re all growing in, it’s becoming obvious that I still have no clue about properly arranging a decorative garden.

While I devoted most of my off-season obsession to planting my veggie garden (above), I kinda neglected the back planters, filling them piecemeal with whatever I happened to find, whether that be some broccoli from the farmer’s market or some mint that resurrected itself from the discard pile. Let’s have an embarrassing quick look shall we?

This here is a C- container. Broccoli and strawberries hang out awkwardly, the latter struggling to recover from a recent caterpillar attack. I think one of the secrets to gardening (like all things) is hiding your mistakes. Though no real gardener I’ve met will admit it, sometimes ripping things out and hiding the bodies isn’t such a bad thing. Currently considering it.

I’m going to give this arrangement a B+. Mint, yellow flowers of an unknown variety, oregano and lavender all seem pretty happy here. Someone with a great deal more experience/pretention might even say there’s a good mix of texture and color here. Good job me.

Two weeks ago this was a D. It’s barely skirting C+ territory now. It used to sparse and sad but now it’s filling in and looking um… original? Potato vine, some South African Somethingorrather Grass and sage dating all the way back to the first year of Panthy’s Garden are slowly getting to know each other. Given enough time, I think it will become the garden equivalent of that intergalactic bar in Star Wars.

Here are some tips to avoid what I did:
1. Make a plan. Position your new plants around before sticking them in the dirt. Give them enough room to grow.
2. Pick plants that compliment each other in color or texture.
3. Or… confusingly, plants that provide good contrast to one another. Use well-ordered, trimmed shrubs or border plants to contrast crazy, out-of-control wild ones.
4. Don’t fight the urge to plant things you think are awesome; just maybe separate the velour, rhinestone ones from the electric blue stirrup ones. Ya dig?

Stop the internet presses. Stop. The. Internet. Presses. The editors over at Tumblr have picked Panthy’s Garden as a spotlight blog (in the Nature category).

By doing this they’re saying that if you’re into nature, this is your kind of motherlovin’ blog. If you’re not, you had better head back over to the “Cute” spotlight category and continue watching puppies hug kittens while sitting on babies.

Now that you’re here I’d like to get a little more specific. If you’re into reading about my robotic owl and how it’s head flew off in a tornado, this is for you. If you like pink gardening gloves, shitty trowels, or impressive, dad-assisted-home-made planter boxes, look no further. This is Brooklyn rooftop gardening in its highest and lowest forms.

If this is a place you regularly waste your time reading about my lettuce, please… please do something more productive with your life. I mean, keep reading! The summer is young (not even here actually); there’s bound to be a myriad of new ways to waste your time reading about my garden. Stay tuned.

Good thing I ordered those ladybugs with second day air seven days ago, from a place literally called Whatever Works. I should’ve known. They refunded my shipping which is groovy, but the insect assault I had hoped to unleash on the aphids has been indefinitely delayed.

But… the locals stepped in. It seems that good eating attracts good eaters. Just stop by Front Street Pizza around 1 on a weekday. Just like there was good pepper plants for the aphids to feast on, the aphids themselves became good eating for the local ladybugs. I found three at work doing the job that my absent mercenaries were paid to do.

As I type this those guys are happily gorging on the insect equivalent of sausage pinwheels and garlic knots. Seems that given enough time, the natural order of things is typically restored. As my burly German garden teacher at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden once said, “Like children, gardens thrive in a bit of neglect.”

“This has been some weather right?” This is usually something the dufus next to you in line says to squash the awkwardness of close stranger contact. But I’d almost prefer the “Wow, that urine smell is really STRONG now that it’s so hot out.” At least then, we can start accurately discussing a thing rather than a generality. But truth is, the weather has been something. Right?

It’s been wet, hot and uh weird. Kinda like (insert Anthony Weiner joke here). Thankfully, Panthy’s Garden is generally geared for the heat. After killing everything that isn’t heat tolerant, I learned that uh… I shouldn’t plant a sub-tropical fern garden up there. Hardy, wind-loving, heat tolerant plants only.

Except…lettuce, pictured here enjoying a bit of shade under this handsomely refinished deck table. In continued heat my miniature Tom Thumb Lettuce will get wrinkly and sad. And so it’s time to start phasing it out with more heat-tolerant varieties.

I planted up my third salad tray with Spotted Trout Lettuce, Rainbow Swiss Chard and a “Lettuce Mix” which I suspect is a hot mess of different lettuces. If all goes according to plan, they will stay longer in the mid-summer heat, allowing me to fulfill my secondary goal of opening Panthy’s Salad Bar. More on that later.

Bins 1-3, step forward. WHAT’S YOUR MAJOR MALFUNCTION SCUMBAGS?!

Oh, you’re under attack from aphids still? I’m pulling you from general population until we get this sorted out.

The Boom Boom Juice has not produced the uh… movements I had hoped for so I just put in an order for re-enforcements: ladybugs, their natural predators. Yes, you can order them on the interweb and yes, they will come in the mail. At the end of their long journey to Panthy’s Garden, there will be plenty to eat.

A while back I was complaining about how crappy my luxurious Ikea outdoor furniture looked; you know the really important stuff in life. After surviving last summer’s tornado (impressive) it got hit by an acid rain/hail storm that made it look like a seagull pooped acid all over it (also impressive).

Now that my veggies are off and running I focused some much needed elbow grease and teak oil on my table. Pictured here are the two halves, one sanded, the other not.

A few hours of hand-sanding every visible surface was followed by two coats of the extremely manly, chemical smelling teak oil. It should be noted that the few hours was passed with a single album on repeat.

Once dried, it was ready for a few of my favorite things. Also, I grew the lettuce in those sliders.

Along with the growth of attractive tomato plants inevitably comes the tiny fuckers that love them just as much as you do: aphids, hornworms, and all manner of summer PEST. If you’ve got a garden, at some point you’ll have some pests too. It’s not the end of the world, it’s just time to saddle up and TCB.

I noticed a few tomato leaves with some little holes eaten through them. Of course, on closer inspection, I found some of these.

Aphids were having a cuddle party on the very newest, most tender buds of one of my pepper plants. I pinched each tiny leaf between my fingers, squashing dozens of them into an aphid patté. HOW’S YOUR CUDDLE PARTY NOW SON?!

But who has the time or patience to do this for every one of your plants? Maybe the North Koreans but I’m guessing they’d rather be doing something else. (Like eating vegetables?) That was not intended to be hurtful.

I noticed a few other Brooklyn garden heads (CityStories, My Brooklyn Rooftop Farm) were reporting similar problems. Thanks to the internuts, I didn’t have to go to my local sorcerer for this homemade, organic remedy.

The witch’s brew consists of:
• Three to four cloves of garlic
• Mineral oil
• Strainer or cheesecloth
• Liquid dish soap
• Water
• Spray bottle

I had no idea what mineral oil was but finally located some at the Tiffany’s of drug stores where it ran me a cool 7 dollars; almost the same cost of an apple and lettuce sandwich. New York I love you, but you’re bringin’ me down.

Not familiar with mineral oil? It’s also called Intestinal Lubricant. Still confused? Have a gander at the label.

(Don’t give me that face, you asked.)

I mixed up the chopped garlic, liquid soap and the boom boom juice, diluted it and bottled it up. After a quick test on one of the leaves with seemingly no ill-effects (or bowel movements) I deemed it safe to hit the whole plant. I carefully flipped over each affected leaf with North Korean-like precision and let out a generous hissing spray, hopefully the last sound these little bastards hear.

It’s a good thing that: A. There’s still land in the city to plant (whether or not it’s yours). B. The cops have better things to do than arrest people for planting marigolds (hand out bike tickets). And C. Gardeners like to document their work (in well-edited, web-friendly formats).

I’ve lived in a major city for the last 16 years. Thing about that is when you escape its boundaries, the natural world explodes in front of you like an unraveling green carpet. The ratio of building-to-tree goes completely off its ass and suddenly the presence of so many living green things becomes nothing short of transcendent.

Also transcendent is the presence of locally-caught perch sandwiches and dollar Old Milwaukee drafts.

I realize to the folks who live out on the farm, this looks like a place of business. But for me, grain silos, unending pastures and the forgotten patches of grass make me feel like I’m seeing first hand that agrarian utopia Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t quit yammering on about so many years ago.

You know, the one where people who were closer to the land were closer to god and therefore better people?

And also closer to great fried food and cheap beer, and therefore a bit heavier set but much friendlier? That’s the one. He was onto something.