I am prone to obsession.

Not with movie stars or Birkin bags, but with hobbies and interests. Right now my mind is dominated by three things:

1) Getting this house in order/looking cute (this is UNBELIEVABLY time consuming, largely because I don’t have a garage or a basement or anywhere to hide anything. I don’t even have a linen closet: they’re all on a bookshelf. Thus, every last object must be given a home, be put away or purged.)

2) Getting my hypnotherapy practice going.

3) My garden.

(and yes, okay, occasionally Angry Birds, but that’s more of a secret shame than something I want to discuss in this forum…)

These are the Black Krim Russian heirloom tomatoes. Black tomatoes!

The house-cleaning and business-building urges are probably good obsessions, as such things go. However, there is a dark side to obsession, and as any half-decent song lyric from the 80s will warn you, where the garden is concerned, my fantasy has turned to madness.

It started out innocently enough. I needed organic Lacinato kale seeds. Sounds easy, but like many things on this island, it isn’t. There was curly kale and Siberian kale and rape kale…but no Lacinato, dinosaur, Tuscan… I would have taken any variety of cavolo nero, but there was none to be had.

Enter Amazon.

And multiple vendors of organic heirloom Lacinato kale seeds…and the arugula I’d wanted and rainbow chard and cilantro and then…a magic carpet ride of other heirloom vegetables so amazing, so incredible, so Willy Wonka wet dream freaking beautiful that before I knew it…I had dropped $27 on seeds.

Or how about the Sea Man Heirloom Tomato? How could I resist!?!?!

***cringe***

It’s not the money so much: $27 will buy you six organic heirloom tomatoes ($6 a pound) if you’re lucky. It will get you eight and a half heads of Lacinato kale. This isn’t much food really, and growing yourself is a much better option. No. The issue isn’t the cost of seeds… it’s where am I going to plant all this stuff???

I have one garden plot. ONE.

And 72 seedlings in a mini greenhouse on my back porch…none of which encompass the new seeds now on the way.

I guess I didn’t really think it out. I saw the tomato that was four different colors, and my wallet was out. I’ve got a gardening fever, and it’s burning up my brains. I need more cowbell AND more land.

That’s okay though. That can be arranged. In fact, I’m so excited I’m going to sign up for another garden plot. And maybe a plot for fruit trees too. Someone told me papaya starts producing in just five months. FIVE MONTHS!?!?!

I've never had Tiger melon - never even heard of it before today - but I sure hope it's good, as I have 25 seeds coming my way.

I lay in bed at night with visions of strawberry papaya and ice cream bananas dancing on a carpet of Lacinato kale in my head.

It’s madness.

I have to stop thinking about it really.

My life is trembling, I have no control.

Oops!
I just remembered the reason I gave this post the title you see above: enter the Peter Pepper. ***ahem.***

And no, I didn’t order any of them. What? You think I’m some kind of pervert?

Awkward.