My friend S., a talented but struggling artist has become a real estate investor. She recently bought an apartment building in Staten Island and has spent some time gardening over there. I found this kind of sweet, as S. is one the least domestic women I know. She never cooks, and if I ever suggest going to visit a botanical garden, she just gives me a look, that essentially means, "Why would anyone want to do that?" We end up at an art gallery or book reading.

As a fledgling landlord, she soon learned that while there were six units in the building, it had only been zoned for four. One woman in the building knew this, and had never paid rent. She hung this threat over the old and new landlord's head.

Despite this unpleasantry, S. liked the rest of the tenants, particularly "Trixie" a professional dominatrix who worked out of her Staten Island home. S. spent a lot of time over there, fixing up the place and trying to negotiate with the woman who refused to pay rent. S. hired a lawyer and started the court battle to get her out. Weeks of this tenant dodging her, not showing up to court, or not moving her things out were a constant strain on S. Through it, she became better friends with "Trixie" and even rented out another unit to a friend and co-worker of Trixie's, another dominatrix.

She finally got the tenant who would not pay out, but her resources were drained from legal fees and renovations. Through this all, after each visit to Staten Island, she'd been returning to Brooklyn with buckets of tomatoes from "her garden".

When I asked how she had such a bumper crop, she just shrugged, "Iggy helped me." Iggy is a brown miniature cock-a-poo. It was like the old television program, Green Acres, when the star would throw some eggs into a cake mix box, put the whole thing in the oven and then pull a cake out minute later.

We kept it simple with the tomatoes, just sliced them and added salt and pepper
, maybe drizzle some olive oil and balsamic on them. We'd make gazpacho if she had a blender. S. fretted about money problems, especially since some of the units needed to have their pipes fixed, and she was broke from the eviction. Then "Trixie" proposed a solution. One of her client's was a plumber. Perhaps if the two of them spanked him in the bathroom, then he might be inclined to fix the pipes at no cost.

So being a dutiful landlord, S. did it! She and "Trixie" gave him a good-old fashion Catholic bad-boy spanking and he fixed the pipes in return. As he left, he told them to call if they needed the boiler repaired.