tiny garden: rooftop pollinators.

We’re back in Brooklyn after a few days away. Before we left I filled glass bottles with water and jammed them upside down into the freshly saturated soil of my rooftop pots. My hope was that once the soil needed it, the bottled up water would be there as a tiny additional offering of hydration, which seemed reasonably better than no offering at all. Had I looked at the forecast, I might not have bothered with the bottles. After days of relentless heat, our little corner was drenched by rain for four days running and where I was afraid I’d see shriveled up plants, I found a still-lush corner on an otherwise blazing roof.

Every time I bring home another pot of something or other to keep alive on our arid rooftop, I feel like I’m taking a tiny leap of slightly harebrained faith. I hope that with enough care and nurturing the new little plant will stay alive and that in exchange for cool drinks of water and gentle pulling off of spent blooms, we’ll have a bit of color and something tasty for humans or pollinators or with any luck, both. It’s not always clear how fruitful or long lasting these garden experiments will be, but when we came back today we found a black swallowtail caterpillar on our flat-leaf parsley. It’s just one native pollinator on one small parsley, but it feels reasonably better than no pollinator at all.

For the curious:

Our copper watering can was a gift from Bloomist. Our pots are a motley array of found and gifted and purchased planters; lots more like them at GRDN here in Brooklyn and online at Bloomist. Most of our plants were purchased locally at Gowanus Nursery.

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