When good garlic goes bad

it grows? Apparently even my refrigerator is better with botanicals than I am. I've had these huge clumps of garlic that I bought at Super Fresh since last August maybe. I obviously bought more than I needed at the time and so never used that much of it. When I looked in the veggie drawer a while ago, I noticed my garlic had begun to sprout some green. I was at my friend Annie's yesterday and we were looking around in her garden. What I thought were onions, she informed me, were actually little garlic shoots. She said that instead of just throwing out her garlic when it had begun to go green, as mine were, she planted them instead. What an absolutely obvious and wonderful idea! Of course, this had not occurred to me.

So last night, I peeled every single garlic clove in those huge clumps. I now have 32 garlic babies to plant. Wow. And now that I am actually beginning to embrace the cooking-at-home thing, I may actually be able to use what I harvest. Mmmm... and my herb garden expands.

Getting down to business

Well, the basil and rosemary have been transplanted from their plastic pots to the tiny herb garden by the back door. The only problem I can foresee is that, now that trees have filled out for summer, they might not get as much sun as they want. All my research tells me that both basil and rosemary like LOTS of sun. So, we'll see, I guess. I inherited my mother's brown thumb, so I have a bit of a curse to work against when it comes to nurturing plant life, something I'm hoping to overcome.

I also managed to break out of this latest writing slump. I actually managed to come up with a poem fragment last weekend that, I think, has quite a bit of potential:


Rainy Evening from the Chester River Bridge

Street-light runs down the
riverside like mascara

her inked-up winking
streaked and ...


And that's all I've got so far. But it's something! I feel refreshed now. Maybe I'll even manage a little something this week.

I've also been developing more ideas for the collaborative illustrated poetry chapbook project with my friend Emily. I'm dreaming about a one-signature text block bound in red thread with an exposed spine. There will be paper pockets tipped-in and a paperboard slip case like a box for a card deck.