You’ve made it to yet another gripping installment of What the Fuck is Happening Up in Panthy’s Garden! Here’s your trophy, send me your address, I’ll mail it to you. 

Whoa buddy, how come you so salty? Well I’ll tell you. Get a load of these guys. ALREADY. These little bastards usually don’t turn up until mid-summer, and yet here they are, tiny black aphids getting their start on the underside of my nasturtiums.

In time, their sugary excretions known as “honeydew” will coat these leaves and a train of ants will begin somewhere in Queens, marching all the way to Panthy’s Garden to harvest it. 

My crop of tomatoes and everything else will become a wilted embarrassment. Every two weeks I’ll pull off a horrible, disfigured tomato and fling it as far as I can onto the street below. Green Zebra my ass. 

Last year, I ordered up an insect cavalry of lady bugs to handle this problem. It was amazing watching lady bugs eat the faces of aphids. I literally sat for an hour, at night, with a headlamp, like a creep, watching ladybugs slowly massacre aphids. And I have noticed a few of these guys, who I suspect are aphid eaters…. 

But I’m feeling a bit more urgency, this cluster says to me “infestation.” This needed to be handled TODAY. 

Hose: on. I adjusted the nozzle adjusted to the fearsome FLAT setting typically used to hose vomit off sidewalks. Leaf by leaf, I blasted them into oblivion with a powerful jet of water.

The unlucky aphids that wound up on my hands got the finger smoosh. If I didn’t think I’d hose down my iPhone in the process I would’ve done a better job at capturing this but take my word for it, it was awesome. 

Apparently, this is a viable solution to the aphid problem, at least according some person on the internet. I’m not into pesticides, and my solution of soap and mineral oil was really only partially successful. And who doesn’t like blasting the enemy with brute force? The world is built on it.

Sure, I enjoy the carnage. Maybe too much. But it’s in service of a higher cause: FREEDOM. No, actually, it’s in service of eating of fine, homegrown, pretentious, heirloom, hipster-ass, Brooklyn, tomatoes. Like these little beauties…

My pal Isaac who promised me a boat ride around Manhattan with an Albanian, brought something far more useful to my attention than false promises: an alternate revenue plan for Panthy’s Garden should it start to operate at a net loss. PS: it’s been operating at a net loss since the day it opened. THANKS A LOT SQUIRRELS.

Isaac holding two giant bags worth of false promises.

Apparently, Brooklyn DIRT is being sold world-wide to those who want to own a little bit of its gritty essence. And you know what I got a lot of? Brooklyn DIRT. Hell, I probably have the finest dirt in the damn borough: hand-carried up five flights of stairs, infused with compost made from the area’s finest Chinese and Cuban food, and used to grow heirloom vegetables on a ROOF. C’mon son. 

But I can’t offer you dirt from the other boroughs or from Panthy’s Garden, not yet anyway. If you want a little filth from each of the five boroughs, you can get a sampler pack for a piddly $96 from bottledBrooklyn who is also selling the aforementioned Brooklyn dirt. 

According to the recent article in the New York Times, these assholes walk around with cloth waiting to for just the right bit of filth to capture and sell: “If we see something we’re inspired by, we’ll rub it.” Uh huh.

For those who are trafficking in Brooklyn dirt I will tell you this: Brooklyn ain’t in the dirt. Like god, it’s everywhere. It’s in the burning tire smell, the police sirens and the over-priced artisinal cheese. It’s in the hipster armpit, the sidewalk bloodstains, and the googly-eyed Osama Bin Ladens. It’s in the park after dark, and in the bagels in the AM, but bottom-line, to get it, you gutta be here.