During my time in New York City as a magazine editor, I found ways to keep myself rooted in the natural world. I fished on weekends in Long Island Sound (and even occasionally before work in the Hudson River), spread birdseed on my windowsill so the grackles would fill my room with bird chatter in the morning and drown out the ever-present sirens and the might be a stretch. But each summer, in a show of even more optimism than required of your average gardener, I’d plant a few veggies in pots on my tenth-floor fire escape. It wasn’t an easy go for the plants. Surrounding apartment buildings often blotted out the sun. Every now and then someone in one of the two floors above me would empty out a mop bucket, raining soapy water down on my crop. The only plant that actually thrived—make that survived—was the jalapeño.
