Under the Hum of Neon
By Marilee Foster

It did cross my mind, that agriculture has ruined my social life. And my version of a good and entertaining evening out is now but a simple turn about the buildings and property on that first humid—humid and warm—night of spring, when the first warm(ish) rain comes, and the ocean is churning, and you swear the earth exhales.

The ground goes loose with worms. We take a flashlight and as we walk we catch glimpses of them with our strobe. They freeze for a millisecond and then rapidly withdraw, sliding silvery pink, hundreds of them, slipping back into their neatly rimmed tunnels as we approach. If you listen very hard you can hear this.

Counting worms, thrilled to be finding treasure, we go from the chicken yard, to the woodpile, to the greenhouse, back in front of the potato cellar, and then across the farmyard to the rhubarb patch. This 10-by-50 plot is the most amorous spot on the farm for earthworms, a solid orgy.

My plants don’t begin dependent on the weather, as they will eventually be, but on artificial conditions I create in a grow-room atmosphere. In an insulated cube in my parent’s basement, humid and consistently 75 degrees, under rays of pink light, and the hum of neon for 14 hours a day allows them to begin life so uniformly.

But they outgrow this easy environment quickly, and from there they move to our living room where they get indirect sunlight in the a.m. and direct in the p.m.—if the sun is shining at all. These imperfect conditions check their growth, slow them down, and get them better acquainted with the real world. I spin their trays every other day lest they lean.

It is in my house that the dialogue with my future garden begins. I don’t think plants understand much of the human language, but they understand some and certainly gesture counts. So simple words suffice: “Welcome,” I annunciate and serve up with a deep bow. I admire them daily, ask if they’d like music and tell them how happy I am to have them living with us. My parties of plants come and go. At first it’s all leeks. Then a few flats of early tomatoes. I thank them for coming effusively. When the eggplant and peppers show up, naturally they argue with the others. The others move on to the greenhouse, for a while it’s just the two of them, and we don’t really talk so much.