Bike or metro: good, bad and ugly

The last time I commuted by bike, I was still enthralled with the virtue of it: It’s healthy! It’s time-efficient! It’s free!

It’s the mantra of many bike commuters.

But this time, not so much.

I usually embrace even the gritty bits, admiring the symmetry of a neatly laid brick sidewalk, or the exaggerated color on a wall of graffiti. But this time I got stuck behind a noisy, exhaust-spewing construction vehicle on Ft. Totten Drive, passed several smelly trash trucks near the “transfer station,” aka the dump, and wound my way through streets dotted with orange cones and construction crews. There was one bright spot: when I stopped to check my tires, which were click-click-clicking after I rode through some broken glass (and yes, I pulled out a shard of glass I was lucky didn’t pierce the tube), a friendly biker stopped to see if I was okay, and we wound up riding together for a while, talking about puncture-proofing tires (he lines his with deflated extra tubes that fit between the inflated tube and the tire itself) and generally chit-chatting the ride away.

Biking is like that: some days it is all trash trucks and broken glass. Other days it is pleasant, park scenery and friendly encounters with unexpected companions. Sometimes it’s a mix. Either way, you wind up at your destination – and it’s still healthy! Time-efficient! And free!

Today, I took the bike to the metro station, then hopped on the train. I avoided the yarmulke-wearing guy who reads from what I am guessing is the Torah under his breath – that feels like such a private act and I thought I might be distracting to him – and instead sat next to the woman who was practicing Japanese letter-characters in what looked to be a child’s workbook. I am hoping I’ll get a seat on the crowded ride home. Because, like biking, metro can be many things: a slog through a jostling, surly crowd, an curious sojourn with a car full of interestingly diverse fellow travelers, or a mix of both.

Other people's gardens

Pat on planting day this spring

 

My garden is a sad, sad thing this year. After I ambitiously planted squash, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, beets, chard and basil, life outside the garden took over and everything went to seed.

Literally.

What I have now is a plot of weeds, with a distant memory of five zucchini, a couple of batches of pesto, a handful of chard and two tomatoes. Oh, and I also have: friends with gardens.

Which is one of the best things to have, ever.

First, I must thank several neighbor friends for sharing their harvest – in exchange for picking up mail while they were on vacation, or just because there was so much in the garden they needed help consuming it all.  There were many nights when I was out at dusk, rustling through the garden across the street, picking salad for dinner, sure someone would walk by and raise an eyebrow. No, I am not a garden thief -- they really did encourage me to share their bounty.

There are also friends who bring their garden produce to the potlucks and family dinners I enjoy: There are few things that sound better to me at a potluck than, “it’s from the garden.”

That was the recurrent theme at a recent lunch with my Copper Hill friends and gardeners extraordinaire.  We share a fantasy that we will one day host dinner al fresco, with a long table set out in a picturesque field and guests bearing homemade pies and baked casseroles made from herbs and vegetables they’ve grown themselves. Everyone will dress in white and there will be a string quartet playing under the oak, very “Shakespeare in Love.”

In fact, I have attended potlucks in Copper Hill where people brought goat cheese they’d made themselves, and where the vegetable lasagna was full of the zucchini and tomatoes grown in the back yard (more tye-dye and denim than white dresses and violins, though).

The other day, lunch was no extravagant affair, but it was hyper-local: from the garden just outside the door. The salad, of simple leaf lettuce, was spiked with nasturtium leaves and tender, young mustard greens. I didn’t know “tender” and “mustard greens” could go together, but these young leaves were like butter lettuce, with crinkly edges and a very spicy bite. And I didn’t know you could eat the peppery leaves as well as the flowers of nasturtiums, whose brilliant sunburst blossoms I’ve always envied in other people’s gardens. There was a luscious yellow tomato, too, sliced thick and juicy on a bright red plate.

Separately, we had a sauteed mixture of all-garden, all-organic anaheim and pasilla peppers, onions and pesto (from garden basil), which served as a rich bed of flavor for chunks of spiced, breaded chicken – the only item that had not been grown on the premises.

Wandering through the garden before we left, I admired the clever structures built of hog wire, where tomatoes climb neatly, instead of sprawling all over those unattractive cone-shaped tomato cages I’ve been dragging about for years. I picked some tender green beans that hung from similar wire teepees, and noted the feathery stalks of asparagus, promising a spring harvest next year. New fall lettuces were sprouting and there were butternut squash everywhere.

I came away with a basket full of goodies – peppers, squash and basil. Thanks, Pat and John! Maybe I’ll put something together for the next potluck and boast: “It’s from the garden.”