Zone Envy by Lea Ann Robson

Pineapple w/limb full of mangos

I’ve been outside, gleefully planting in the mud.    My genetic clock refuses to be reset, despite 21 years away from the West Virginia hometown where these seasonal markers make sense.  It has to be some hindbrain function, as completely entrenched & unreachable as the tap-rooted weeds popping up through my stone patio. 

Ground Orchid cluster

At 2am, I was pounding a Phillips head screwdriver into my yard & wiggling it to make spaces for my new solar lights.  After that I planted hot pink, crimson & scarlet Kalanchoes in my yellow planters…because in spring we plant flowers…no matter how many are already blooming year-round in the tropics.  Lately Home Depot (oh, my beloved Home Depot) is chock full of continentals (stateside transplants), mostly women close to my age, filling carts with anachronistic bedding plants & bags of soil, in some knee-jerk reaction to Spring.  If our brainwave activity had a verbal interpretation, it would read “MUST DIG & PLANT…MUST DIG & PLANT,” like some Cro-Magnon tickertape printout. 

External cues are so different here.  Spring’s rays of light are of the longer, golden variety reserved for autumn in the continental states.  Mahogany trees actually drop their shiny leaves in the spring, with each breeze initiating an insane leaf dance that is at once graceful & leathery…& confusing. 

And yet these tropical tricks don’t still the impulse to add more flowers, plant herbs & vegetables, & to start over. 

Waterlemon (passion fruit family) bloom

The do-over is a common thread here.  Many of us came to St. Croix because something wasn’t working, wasn’t quite right where we were & we hoped this big leap of locale would hit our reset switch, knock us out of the groove we were wearing in our lives, & give us the new perspective we sought.  For many of us, it worked spectacularly.  For others, not so much. 

Even for the successful transplants, certain ingrained behaviors were either hard to shake, or reappeared after we had initially overcome them.   Though I’ve long since abandoned stockings & heels, I still tend to overdress in defiance of the casual chic vibe here.  It was part of the identity I wasn’t willing to jettison, regardless of the impracticality in this environment. 

So for 21 years, when March, April, & May roll around & despite the fact I have to concentrate hard every morning to even determine what month it is (our temperature only varies 5-10 degrees, year round), my brain says plant, & so plant I do. 

Some of us long to be able to grow things they left behind, & Home Depot’s packing policy fuels that nostalgia.  When they have room in garden supply containers bound for our islands, Home Depot packs empty spaces with whatever plants they have in abundance, regardless of their zonal incompatibility.  The latest is one of my favorites, Hydrangeas.  I love the shape of their leaves, their flower colors, & the fact they’re a living science experiment with flower hues indicating the acidity of the soil.  HD’s massed displays of the short shrubs are so tempting, even knowing what I know about how miserable they will be here.  Like dieting, frequently that denial of what we instinctually crave causes a pendulum swing & a binge the other direction.

Kalanchoes

So I planted Kalanchoes instead.   Lots of Kalanchoes.  Everywhere.

The subverted need to plant tomatoes popped out the other side & I planted instead the local substitute for cilantro—Recao.  It has a broader, long leaf with serrated edges, & when a shower hits them after a day of sun, the scent released is fresh & clean.  I also grow lots of lemongrass & several varieties of basil.  The lemongrass blob is huge & clippings infuse most everything I cook, most of the year.  I steep it with basmati rice, steam it with asparagus spears (imports, I’m sad to say) & Brussels sprouts (they grow here as do most cruciferous veggies—leggy but functional).   

I pound the base of the lemongrass stalks & steep them with lemon bay rum leaves, peppermint tea bags & a generous amount of Lipton bags to make a fragrant iced tea & a wonderful smelling house. 

A note here about tomatoes:  I have successfully grown heirloom varieties here, if you accept success as smaller & more sparse fruit that tastes pretty wonderful anyway.  A couple of their small, peppery slices on a sandwich with whole wheat bread quell any longing for pretty much anything.  And of course the season is almost here for mangos, Surinam cherries & my favorite pineapples, along with bananas… bananas… bananas (not a complaint, merely a statement of plenty).

Dendrobium Andree Millar
 

So as soon as the rain slacks a bit I’ll be back outside, drilling drain holes in planters, flopping big bags of soil from place to place & planting sunflowers, zinnias…& heirloom tomatoes.  (That sandwich sounded too good to pass up.) 

Happy Spring, regardless of what zone you’re in!