That night, he gushed about an apartment he’d found after a fellow student in his program had decided she didn’t want to live there anymore. He raved about its hardwood floors, its closet space, the amazing sunroom, the fabulous location.

“There’s only one problem,” he said. “It doesn’t have what I would call a real kitchen.”

I sat up straight on my couch in my apartment in Northern Virginia, looking around at the apartment I’d worked so hard to find and make my own. “What do you mean it doesn’t have a real kitchen?”

“Well, it kind of has a galley kitchen,” he said. “It has a stove, and a little bit of a counter, and a sink, and that’s pretty much it. Oh, and a refrigerator.”

“And you signed a lease?” I said. “For a year?”

“Of course,” he said. “It’s a great apartment.”

If he had looked to the east, he would have seen the mushroom cloud from my head exploding. “Do you have any idea what it means for me not to have a kitchen I can cook in?” I said. “Cooking is my therapy. I won’t be sane if I don’t have a kitchen.”

The story ended happily, at least for a time, though it required some more negotiating before he was able to go back, break the lease, and then seek out a new place, the place we ended up living in together, the apartment that spanned the bottom floor of a house and had a wonderful, giant farmhouse kitchen that fit all our friends and our music, and, after we split up, was where I worked and cooked and cried and strategized next steps and, finally, came back to life.

I am still friends with the man who took that lease off Steve’s hands, and the first time we went to a party at that same apartment, I walked in the kitchen, turned around and said to Steve, “Are you kidding me? Do you know me at all?” The kitchen was even smaller and more awkward than I’d imagined from the description. Between that and the winters, I would have never made it a single year in Iowa had we moved in there.

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about those days anymore, but on some nights, nights like last night, when I stumbled home from work overwhelmed and head-spun and exhausted, when the processing in my mind was overtaking the carefully planned to-do list I’d set for myself, I remember what I said back in 2005. Cooking is my therapy.

And so I walked in the door, took stock of what I had and what I needed, ran to the market for local produce and milk, and came home to make my own versions of comfort food: rosemary-artichoke hummus, which ended up as dinner atop a zatar-crusted pita; soup made from homemade stock and laced with Parmaggiano-Reggiano rinds I’d been saving in the freezer for just such a purpose; and my first-ever pot pie.

As I stirred the sauce for the pot pie, the flour, butter, stock, milk and sage transforming into something thick and glossy over the many minutes, I thought about my grandmother and how she taught me to make roux and transform it into cream or cheese sauce. And I thought about my friend Erin, who gave me the flat-headed whisk I use to make such a sauce just before she moved to Sweden to live with the man she had loved for years. She married him after he proposed to her somewhere over the Atlantic halfway between Sweden and the United States.

And I thought about the Swanson pot pies my babysitter would heat up for me on nights when my parents would go out for dates when I was a kid, and the smell of my mother’s perfume as she put on her dress and makeup, and how she and my father would sneak into my room to kiss me goodnight when they got home. They never thought I woke up, but I always did, and I loved the ultimate safety of those shadowy hellos.

Cooking is my therapy, and my memory, and just one of the ways I express myself. And on nights like last night, it is what brings me back to what’s most important.

None Found

I remember, when Steve planted them, wondering if he’d be around to see them bloom. Then he left, and I wondered if any of the bulbs would grow at all, because they weren’t very productive. Then some of the most gorgeous, creamy gladiolas ever popped up and bloomed.

A few days ago, I came home to find the whole bed sheared down to dirt. I had a moment of silence for it all, then decided I’d give up the fight on that particular area of the yard. It’s directly under the black walnut tree, gets very little sunlight for that reason, and honestly, I’m just a single gardener trying to get all this stuff done in a house that I rent. I think I can let it go.

Besides, it gets back to this: the landlord mows. Which means I don’t have to.

• The edgeless bulb bed
• Where it’s at: July 1
• Lettuce crater
• The most noxious weed of all
• Time to call the farm team

I took this picture of the budding magnolia in our front yard after an ice storm. I am an optimist, and even though the newspaper and everyone in the local foods community buzzed about the ice and its effect on the blossoms of local fruit trees, I believed it was just a matter of time before the magnolia would flower, its pinkish-white blooms bursting forth the way they had the year before.

There was a day when I arrived home from work and noticed small, grey capsules littering the walkway leading to the front porch. Clearly they had fallen from the tree, and I will admit to a passing thought that, perhaps, these were the buds, and that they had been frozen so hard they had withered, and dropped away. But I shook off that thought and proceeded inside, tumbling forward with my life, still certain I’d see blossoms sooner rather than later.

I know the tree blossomed the week before Easter in 2006. My mother, my godmother and another of their friends from college came to visit us for Palm Sunday weekend, and I remember the tree exploding into color just after my mother got back on the plane the following Wednesday. As Easter approached this year, I kept waiting for the flowers, the scent, the bruised petals that littered the sidewalk.

But Easter came and went, and April tumbled on, and there was no sign of bloom. I kept mentioning it as Steve and I came and went from the house, sometimes together, sometimes apart. “I don’t think it’s going to flower this year,” I said again and again.

Then, one day toward the end of April, I noticed the tree had sprouted tender, green leaves. They looked familiar. They looked like the leaves that come after the blossoms have dropped to the ground.

“It’s definitely not blooming,” I told Steve.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Definitely not,” I said.

The magnolia tree broke my heart this year. All winter, I’d taken pictures of it — outside in the falling snow, through the blinds on a grey and heavy Sunday afternoon, when the ice sealed it to itself — with the certain knowledge that in a matter of months, the cycle would end, rewarding me with the beautiful blossoms I knew the tree was capable of producing.

I don’t remember making a decision to let go of the hope of flowers this year, but I know one day in May, I stopped wondering when the tree would bloom and embraced the understanding. The time for flowers had passed. It was time to move on, to let the tree be as it was, rather than what I hoped it would be.

• The darnedest thing
• Oakland’s December decoration
• Magnolia: Oakland style
• Guest Post: Fairies inspire a young gardener
• Flower salad

I thought about trying to replace it, but I was already in danger of being late for my flight, so I just ignored it, figured I’d deal with it when I got home, and finished my watering.

Back in Iowa City, Steve is on watering duty, and he reported in via instant messenger that he, too, had seen the fallen flower, which was probably torn up by whatever dug around in my herb pots.

steve: something yanked up one of the four blue/purple flowers in the garden
steve: was on its side, clump o dirt attached
genie: I think I saw that yesterday morning and ignored it.
genie: Did you throw it in the compost bin?
steve: yes
steve: there was a note
genie: A note?
steve: it said “for every day a pound of arugula is not placed upon the stoop, a flower gets it.”

• Nothing to it
• Breaking ground
• Flowers for a Friday night
• No tomato for you
• An answer from across town

Take today’s celebration, for example. One year ago today, I posted my first entry. (Actually, truth be told, I wrote three posts and then back-posted by two days so I could send the link to a few friends and make the blog look like it had more than one entry. But the first post is dated May 6, 2006, so I’m going with that.)

That being said, I somehow got it in my head that the first post was on May 5, not May 6. This is why, after brunch yesterday, Steve and I set off for Hy-Vee in search of a new shower curtain liner, some Dran-o (I know it’s bad for the environment, but the tub must drain, people. It must drain.), and cupcakes with which to celebrate. It was, without question, an odd combination for the store clerk to ring up.

“You should take the cupcake out to the garden,” said Steve, and it was a great idea, but for the fact that yesterday was awfully breezy.

As it turns out? Matches and breeziness? Not good friends. “Why don’t you go and get the lighter?” Steve asked after I lit my third match to no avail.

The lighter didn’t work much better, but we did manage to get the candle lit and the appropriate photo shot. Steve headed for the house with the cupcake, and I turned back around to see if I could get a shot of an emerging pea shoot or something.

Meanwhile, behind me, Steve let out an unprintable word. The cupcake had somehow flipped off the plate and landed icing-first in the grass.

“Good thing we bought extras,” I said, shooting a picture of him holding the empty plate, the cupcake at his feet in the grass.

I finished shooting photos of seedlings and came inside to write my blog entry and download my pictures.

What pictures? said my computer. We don’t see no stinkin’ pictures on that memory card.

Somehow, without any sign of corruption or weirdness, my iPhoto import turned disastrous. Photos of a dinner earlier in the week? Gone. All my birthday cupcake photos? Gone.

“Did you throw away the candle?” I asked Steve.

He had not, and we paraded back out to the garden for another photography session. I tried to imagine what my neighbors must think of me, then stopped when I got to the part where they shake their heads sadly and say, “Is she really having a birthday party for her garden?”

We nestled the cupcake plate back amidst the garlic, and Steve started trying to light the candle again. I shot furiously, taking picture after picture before the wind blew out the candle again.

I slid my camera in my jeans pocket and picked up the cupcake plate just as Steve said, “Did you take all those pictures with the candle backward?”

I squinted at the cupcake. “No, I did not.”

“I think you did.”

I refused to present the camera as evidence, because it occurred to me that, in fact, Steve was right. The candle had been backward, presenting itself more like a mutant seven than a one.

And then? At that moment? The weight of the candle began to topple the cupcake, which very nearly fell off the plate and on the ground. Steve was beside himself.

This time, however, the photos did appear when I tried to import them into iPhoto. And I figured out, in time, that I had celebrated a day early, which might be why there were so many glitches in the situation.

But, at least, thanks to Photoshop and its handy-dandy photo flipping option, I present to you the cupcake, topped with a one. Happy birthday, li’l blog.

• Celebrating BlogDay 2006
• Where it’s at: June 17
• Know thy own garden
• Insect Vogue
• Fifteen minutes

Although Steve and I finally decided it was time to make the leap to making it via a compost pile, that wasn’t going to do us any good as the planting season got underway. We had to come up with an interim solution.

Thanks to a comment from Don and some helpful suggestions from members of the Iowa City Freecycle listserv, I learned the Johnson County Landfill offers compost for next to free. All you need is a truck.

Unfortunately, trucks aren’t free. Nor do we own one.

“Maybe I could line some of our big pots with plastic garbage bags and go get some,” Steve offered. “After all, you said I have the Dirt Car.”

I looked up the information online and learned that, in fact, you can get up to 200 pounds of compost from the landfill for $1.

Yes, I said $1. Now I understand why Don said it’s cheaper to just go get a truckload there than to mess with making it on one’s own.

So, yesterday, Steve took a trip out to the landfill and picked up three pots of compost for our spring planting needs.

“Did you have any problems?” I asked when I got home.

“Not at all,” Steve said.

“How much did it cost you?”

“Nothing,” he said. “No one stopped me when I drove in, I followed the signs to the compost pile, I took some out of the pile marked ‘Finished Compost’ and I left.”

This afternoon, as I stood in line at the nearby Earl May Garden Center with a couple of bags of potting soil in my arms, I overheard a customer ask where the compost was.

“Over there by the lightpost in the green bags,” said the store manager, pointing outside. “You pay here, and then just go pick it up and load it in your car.”

I chuckled to myself. If that person only knew what kind of bargain was available across town…but she was already whipping out her credit card, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her.

• The demise of the hoodie
• In exchange for room and board
• Good compost makes good neighbors
• Volunteering suspense
• Teach the children well

“What did you get for dinner?” Steve asked when I got home.

I tossed him the packet of seeds.

“Here you go,” I said. “Spinach seeds. To sprinkle on salad.”

“Is it the hot new thing in dining?” Steve asked. “To get back to where it all started? Eating the seeds instead of the vegetable?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Well,” he said. “After all, we do eat eggs.”

• Bring the salad
• Relocation
• A bulb-us problem
• Lettuce give it a try
• Parsley, watered down

Herbs. Vegetables. Flowers. Seed packet after seed packet found their way into our cart. I don’t know how they got there. As far as I’m concerned, my hand was moving under someone else’s control.

I certainly was not under any sort of control.

And then we saw the spring bulbs.

“Gladiolas are kind of wild and crazy,” Steve said, picking up a package and sidling back toward the cart.

“What is this?” I said, picking up a strange shiny object. “A bulb planter? Won’t we need one of those?”

Then I grabbed some dahlia bulbs.

“You know what this means?” Steve asked.

I shook my head.

“It means we have a serious problem,” he said.

• More mowing, more mowing
• Bring the salad
• The edgeless bulb bed
• Lettuce give it a try
• Seed cuisine

I thought about throwing everything in a plastic container, then decided that the plastic, sealable bag that had held the green beans would work perfectly as an interim compost pail. And, since I didn’t want to leave the bag out on the counter until the pail arrives, I stuck it in the freezer.

I warned Steve that the bag was there. All I was doing was trying to prevent a nasty defrosting incident, but Steve totally missed that point and went on to this:

“You’re freezing trash?” he asked.

“I’m not freezing trash,” I said. “I’m waiting for the compost pail to arrive. That is totally different.”

He was messing with one of his fish tanks while we had this discussion, including removing some live plants that he had determined were messing up the pH in the water. He mopped at his dripping arm with a paper towel, then started carrying the plant toward the trash can.

“Uh-uh,” I said. “That’s plant material. Put it in the freezer bag.”

“Unbelievable,” Steve replied, heading for the freezer. “UN-believable.”

• Shiny little pail of garbage
• In exchange for room and board
• Someone in my yard likes my compost more than I do
• Compost on the cheap
• Eight inches

Your exhortations? Your claims? Your encouragement? It worked. At least, it worked enough for me to place an order.

I have to give Jenn of Garden Djinn the credit for pushing me over the edge. One of the things that has always put me off from composting has been the crock of decaying produce that composters keep on their kitchen counters. To be fair, if said crock has anything resembling a reasonable lid, this is fine. I mean, like anyone else, I can hold my breath while I open it. I can even empty it thirty to forty times a day, if need be.

You people think I’m full of hyperbole, but really, I’m just afraid of the smell of decay.

But Jenn suggested this fabulous little super-shiny crock. This thing is pretty, folks. Pretty! And yet compost-involved.

“You want pretty with your compost?” Steve asked.

I explained I wanted something that would not retain a single smell. See, back when Steve and I were both residents of the Washington D.C. area, he lived in a house we affectionately called Tibet, because it had a strand of faded prayer flags draped across the front porch. D.C.’s notoriously high rents mean there are a lot of group houses, where any number of people band together, take over the bedrooms and split the rent in an effort to create affordable housing where there is none. Steve lived with four other roommates at Tibet, one of whom kept a garden out back.

The kitchen, most days, was a total disaster. I did everything I could to keep from eating there – there was a fairly constant war on the whiteboard around the corner about how people needed to CLEAN UP AFTER THEMSELVES, but everyone was very pleasant to each other’s faces. And to be fair, everyone was incredibly nice, even if they were comfortable living with a kitchen that left something to be desired in the cleanliness department.

Did you hear that? That was Steve’s head exploding because I’m outing their kitchen to the world. Sorry, Steve.

Because this house had a garden, this house also had a compost pail of sorts. This so-called pail really was a plastic ice cream container with a huge chunk missing out of the lid. Now, I am all for recycling, but, you know, buy some more ice cream so you can get a new container with a hole-free lid. Really. The container leaked the lovely scent of slowly putrifying organic garbage out into the kitchen, since everyone was willing to add to it, but as far as I could tell, no one wanted to empty it. Ever.

“You’re right,” Steve said, when I reminded him of this association I have now with compost. “That was gross.”

So no, I do not want smell with my compost. But I did follow Jenn’s suggestion, and bought the shiny little crock, and it is on its way, along with a wire container for compost, which was quite reasonably priced and, I think, will work fine for my purposes.

Now…all I need is a fork to turn the stuff, and some good weather. Then I’m getting the compost party started.

• Cold storage
• Garbage buffet
• Volunteering suspense
• Compost on the cheap
• Thyme on my hands