Window Salad

There is something irresistible about growing plants from seed. They never seem to turn out as rigorous or prolific as plants started from nursery-borne seedlings, but the joy of watching one sprig of parsley emerge from dirt that I scooped into a pot

and later cleaned from under my fingernails, is what keeps me browsing through seed catalogs year after year. One of my favorites is the Cook's Garden.

On the left is a crop of mesclun, grown from a packet of seeds I obtained from the restaurant Broadway East, where they give away seeds (instead of matches) encased in a matchbook. To the right is a Thai Hot Pepper plant, which took two years to produce the teeny, tiny peppers just beginning to emerge.