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So there is good news and bad news about our new community garden plot. The good news: it is a nice-looking, friendly little garden, and we’ve already met two other gardeners who were extremely nice and seemed about the same level of experienced-amateur gardener that I might consider myself to be. Our garden leaders seem very nice, and should be holding some kind of group meeting soon, which I hope will allow me to really get to know the rest of the gardeners.

The bad news is a little more serious. Our 100 square foot plot sits next to two 30-feet tall blue spruces. That might be OK, except they sit immediately to the south. The. plot. is. shady. all. day.

If you’re not a gardener, you may at this point be saying, “So what? Clearly plants grow in shade, I see them all the time. Grow up!” In part, you’re right: I should grow up, but this is the second time in recent months I’ve had this problem: when we moved into our northwest-bottom-corner apartment and found I couldn’t raise much in pots on the windowsills. The garden was supposed to correct that problem, but as Sam considers, perhaps we are being “hazed” as new members of this exclusive locale. The pure shadiness of the plot means that more than half of the things I planned to grow must be crossed off. So, tomatoes, gladiolas, all peppers, basil, daisies and zinnias are out. LOTS of lettuce, spinach, broccoli, peas, collards, and did I mention lettuce? are in. We’ll show them we know how to garden.

The tragedy that keeps me from accepting this and moving on is that I haven’t grown tomatoes for over a year now, and was desperately looking forward to raising the crop that has the most payoff: a freshly grown and plucked tomato, something I could rest assured would grow in Colorado with much the same requirements as in Missouri. While I could quietly slip my brother $50 cash (he’s a certified sawyer) and the trees would suddenly no longer block the sun, I have a feeling I’d be hunted down by an angry mob if I did, since no one else would stand to gain from the trees mysteriously being chopped down.

So, we’ve taken the first steps – meeting a few other gardeners, and amending the soil with high-quality compost and sheep manure while picking out the blue spruce pinecones. This week I’ll probably put down peas and a few kinds of lettuce and spinach. If things work out, we’ll get a lucrative trading system down, offering the rare mid-summer spinach and lettuce when everyone else is drowning in tomatoes and basil. Oh, and next year we’ll request a move to a sunny plot.

In the last month or so, Sam and I have explored and embraced three unique new tastes. In my case, I discovered a love for coarse-ground mustard (especially on a soft pretzel) and that Kalamata olives are actually pretty similar to capers, which I already put on a surprising number of foods. Sam is pushing me to accept green and black olives into my heart, but let’s not go crazy here…black olives simply don’t impress me on pizza, which is where I usually encounter them. And as for green olives, well, this is sounding more and more like a plot to get me to join Sam in his petty crime of stealing one or two olives from grocery stores’ olive bars. Kalamatas, however, I can incorporate into interesting dishes.

Sam, on the other hand, has a different new condiment love. It’d be an exaggeration to say he puts it on everything, but pizza, soup, pasta, bagels, chik patties, and maybe salads at least. It’s called Togarashi, or sometimes Shichimi Togarashi, or sometimes “Japanese 7 Spice”. In short, it’s a spicy powdered mixture that includes chiles, salt and seaweed. We discovered it through its requirement in a ramen-based soup, and since then, it’s dominated Sam’s foods. While it falls within my spice tolerance, I think most foods don’t have to have a delicate combination of chiles and seaweed to finish them off. Hey, to each their own.