Sometimes I think I’ve figured out some order in the universe, but then I find myself in Florida.

Susan Orlean, The Orchid Hunter

As you meander down the European rose garden of the Biltmore Estate, with its perfectly ordered petals in perfectly ordered rows, the earth suddenly drops away from you and up rises a vast expanse of glass darkened by the ferny leaves and tendrils of thick jungle creeping ever towards the haloed reaches of the top. These are the greenhouses, connected by a clever series of interior hallways. In one of them, I am standing in front of an orchid. It happened to be a purple vanda, which is lucky, because it’s the only orchid name I actually know since I don’t know jack about orchids.

Enjoy some interesting vines instead.

Two women had just come up to the thing. They were both oohing and aahing, the way that people do. So rare! So beautiful! Such a pearl of God’s design on His green earth!

No, that’s just a stupid vanda, I thought. You can’t trip without falling on one. They’re at every arts and crafts fair, every grocery store, every Home Depot and Lowe’s and probably even WalMart has them sometimes. They are one of the only plants my mom can’t seem to kill, even though she tries really hard by ignoring hers all of the time.

And then I remembered that I wasn’t in Florida right now. The Biltmore Estate is actually in Asheville, North Carolina, which meant that I was the asshole, because in any climate that isn’t tropical, orchids die pretty much immediately. To anyone who doesn’t live in South Florida, or who has never been to South Florida, any orchid at all would be a rare and valuable treat.

Plants are good at giving you a sense of place that way. It seems unlikely that someone would plant a starfruit tree in Minnesota and expect it to be fine, nor does it seem likely that South Floridians would be very successful at growing apple trees, which require a lot more cold weather to bear fruit. While it’s all well and good to grow an orchid in North Carolina if you’re a master gardener, most people are not going to fight their natural climate anywhere near as much.

I am pretty much the opposite of a master gardener myself. I started growing plants on my little apartment patio last year for three reasons: I didn’t like looking at cars and asphalt outside the glass doors to my patio, I was tired of buying basil all the time, and I couldn’t have a pet. This was in spite of all of the seed packets telling me that “full sun” was the way to go. I got about four inches of full sun on that patio, and I figured, fuck it. It’ll be fine. I planted all hundred of my little planter cups with seeds for hot peppers, basil, cilantro, scallions, and mint, because who knows how many wouldn’t make it, right? Unfortunately, only the mint didn’t grow, leaving me to foist off plants on both willing and unwilling friends, coworkers, and family members.

Sunflowers laugh in the face of death.

The fact that things seemed to be growing just fine in spite of the fact that I didn’t know what I was doing encouraged me. Even when I got an infestation of whiteflies so bad that all of my hot peppers’ leaves drooped sadly and fell off and all of my cilantro mysteriously died I was still filled with vibrating enthusiasm. I had little jalapenos and big Hungarian yellow wax peppers. I had fresh Genovese basil to use for caprese and fresh Corsican basil to use for spicy pesto. My scallions became garnishes in my soups. Sunflower seeds I planted climbed up my fence and grew six feet tall before showing their big yellow and black heads. I was growing things! Things that were food! Things that were food that I could put in other food!

And you can, too. Growing things is great for busy people, because you don’t have to go home instead of going to happy hour with your coworkers to walk and feed a tomato plant. Your plant will return the affection you do give it by giving you food, which is hardly something that a dead bird dragged in by your pet will do. Plus, it feels like time zooms by as your little bitty seedlings turn into giant, food-producing machines.

In fact, we can learn together, because I’m starting over. Sort of. I moved recently, and the new place has a much bigger and better patio that gets way more sun. I have a plan so big that I don’t know if I can live up to it, and I ordered a fig tree. I know. It was irresponsible of me, and a total impulse buy. But maybe things will work out, and I will have giant, juicy figs growing off of a little dwarf that lives on my patio. And maybe it will be a disaster, and my fig tree will sadly wilt away. Who knows? Adventure is the hallmark of a life well lived.