10:14 p.m. - 2003-06-28
The Check's In The Mail
Today was one of those days when it really sinks in that I am just not living in Boston anymore. I'm not even living somewhere inside Route 128.

I'm living in Alabama, where people are just extremely nice and naively trusting. Because they can be!

Bruce and I decided to go around to a nursery we'd never been to before, because they advertised having native plants and herbs and seemed like kind of a hippie dippie place. I figured it would be a change from the rank suburbanism of Loew's and the rank-suburbanism-tempered-by-free-sodas-and-barbequed-chicken-on-Saturday's of Bennett's.

We have another hippie dippie nursery around the corner from our house, but I've been there so often I can't stand it anymore. And besides, they specialise in houseplants and non-native perennials, which I don't really need at this point.

So off we went to Windmill Nursery. When we got there a big sign in front announced: "Free Veggie Plants!!"

"Well, this looks promising!" I chirped. I never turn down a free plant. Especially when our garden got such a pathetically late start.

The place was very rustic and overgrown, with plants everywhere, most with no prices. It was inpiring actually, because it was much easier to visualise what the plant would eventually look like in situ. There were hostas and water plants, and wild hot pink geraniums, and bat-faced cuphias and daylilies, all happily falling out of their pots and sprawling around the ground.

I wanted to live there.

The owner, Barbara, took us in hand and showed us all her natives. She had some great stuff I've been looking for - shooting star, celandine, Virginia bluebells, some big ol' ferns and even St. John's wort and mountain laurel.Some of them were dormant, but she expertly fished around in the pots to make sure the roots were still viable.

Then, realising I was a Yankee who had not a clue about the Southern culture of these plants, she warned me about putting them in shade and how they would go dormant because of the heat and not to worry about it. I asked her endless stupid questions ("So you REALLY can't put celandine in full sun here? REALLY? It will DIE??") and she very patiently answered all of them.

She also, realising I was a fellow herb lover, took me into her greenhouse which was full of things like lemon basil and Korean licorice mint. And yes, they do smell like lemons and licorice. Intoxicating!

And even though she raises them mainly to sell to restaurants I was able to score a few pots. I'm wondering how the bunnies will take to this stuff. I'm not sure that licorice will be a happy taste for them.

While we were in her greenhouse I was admiring a begonia that was running rampant all over the ground. "Oh, that's a perennial begonia." said Barbara. "A lady gave that to me years ago. It's a very old variety and you can grow it outside. You want some? I'll dig up a bunch for you."

A few minutes later I had a flat of gorgeous begonia plants - free!!

She also steered us over to the free veggie plants. Mostly tomatoes and chili peppers and some white eggplant. I've never tried eggplant before and I've heard it's difficult, but for free? No loss if it punts out! I also got some very overgrown Brandywine tomatoes (heirloom Amish variety) and some assorted chili peppers and radicchio plants.

Barbara and her assistant kept handing us flats to fill. "Take more! Take MORE!" they begged. "In a week we'll just throw them in the compost!"

The most insane part, and the part that made me realise we are not in Boston anymore, came when we went in to pay. I had thought she would take our debit card, but she didn't take any cards at all.

And we hadn't brought a checkbook or any cash.

"Will you hold them till we go to an ATM machine?" I felt panicky. Barbara laughed.

"Here's my card. You just send me a check when you get home!"

Bruce and I just stared at her, sputtering. "But....but...you can't do that!" I finally managed to blurt out. "It's fifty dollars! And you don't even know us!"

"Yes, but I know you'll send me a check! I have never had anyone not send me a check! You just take those plants home and enjoy them! I know you'll pay me!"

Good Lord. I was so totally floored I could barely speak. Free begonias, free veggie plants, fabulous herbs and natives, and she trusted us for the check?

What IS this world coming to??!! It's enough to make me think I should become an optimist.

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