Growing Food Is not a Trend
"Man, it is cold out there at the Dogmatic cart! Our spot at the Bleecker Playground is an enigmatic microclimate, a black hole that sucks the temperature down at least a good twenty degrees. Tourists and foolish teenagers stroll past in flip-flops while we cover over the grill, warming our numb hands. If the afternoons were busier then it would not be an issue, but when it's slow there's not much to do besides thinking how miserably cold it is.
My co-workers have taken to wearing multiple pairs of long underwear. I tried this yeasterday and found myself only marginally warmer, plus I felt like a fat slob."
That's from 2007, probably late October or November. I rescued this draft of a post from some dusty computer brain archive in the outer-dimension netherlands of ephemera. Now it sees a sliver of daylight, even if only by my eyes.
Fast-forward two and a half years: it's mid-spring 2009, and we're planting a garden plot in Portland. When I signed up for a spot in the community garden on the other side of the field behind our yard, I figured it would be a good way to experiment a little, and get a few shriveled squash and withered leaves of kale, if nothing else.
But now that I am digging around out there, the relative enormity of the plot dazzles. There is so much space to plant seeds! It makes me giddy and dizzy, and a bit overwhelmed. I've worked about a third of the ground so far, and in what I knew was foolish haste planted chard, kale, and fennel seeds already. The soil is too heavy and needs to be amended with a big truckload of cow poop.
Our plot was fallow last year, and so I am now combing through various ground covers in search of dandelions to eradicate before I give the ground a working-over. It is work indeed. I should get a hoe, but all we have is a shovel and small trowel.
This whole blossoming of gardening in the face of global financial adversity is heartwarming, but the concept that gardening is cheap is a lie. Seeds, yeas, are relatively cheap. But our plot coasts us $100 a year. Our wheelbarrow was $30 at the sued tool shop, but the more I use it, the more I realize how great it would be to have other tools, like a hoe, a rake, and one of those asterik-looking devices you twist to loosen up the dirt. And a bench, and a trellis or two, and the aforementioned cow poop. Gardening nourishes the soul, but it also plants the seeds of consumerism.
This new wave of so-called "victory gardens" needs a new handle. Our gardening is not like the Greatest Generation's stalwart raising of vegetables in order to defeat the Axis; no, our victory shall have to be over the consequences of our own rampant greed. A victory over credit. In order for our victory garden to succeed, I shall have ot keep our own slender credit card sequestered deep in my wallet, and settle for back-breaking labor over nifty tools, even if they are secondhand.
My co-workers have taken to wearing multiple pairs of long underwear. I tried this yeasterday and found myself only marginally warmer, plus I felt like a fat slob."
That's from 2007, probably late October or November. I rescued this draft of a post from some dusty computer brain archive in the outer-dimension netherlands of ephemera. Now it sees a sliver of daylight, even if only by my eyes.
Fast-forward two and a half years: it's mid-spring 2009, and we're planting a garden plot in Portland. When I signed up for a spot in the community garden on the other side of the field behind our yard, I figured it would be a good way to experiment a little, and get a few shriveled squash and withered leaves of kale, if nothing else.
But now that I am digging around out there, the relative enormity of the plot dazzles. There is so much space to plant seeds! It makes me giddy and dizzy, and a bit overwhelmed. I've worked about a third of the ground so far, and in what I knew was foolish haste planted chard, kale, and fennel seeds already. The soil is too heavy and needs to be amended with a big truckload of cow poop.
Our plot was fallow last year, and so I am now combing through various ground covers in search of dandelions to eradicate before I give the ground a working-over. It is work indeed. I should get a hoe, but all we have is a shovel and small trowel.
This whole blossoming of gardening in the face of global financial adversity is heartwarming, but the concept that gardening is cheap is a lie. Seeds, yeas, are relatively cheap. But our plot coasts us $100 a year. Our wheelbarrow was $30 at the sued tool shop, but the more I use it, the more I realize how great it would be to have other tools, like a hoe, a rake, and one of those asterik-looking devices you twist to loosen up the dirt. And a bench, and a trellis or two, and the aforementioned cow poop. Gardening nourishes the soul, but it also plants the seeds of consumerism.
This new wave of so-called "victory gardens" needs a new handle. Our gardening is not like the Greatest Generation's stalwart raising of vegetables in order to defeat the Axis; no, our victory shall have to be over the consequences of our own rampant greed. A victory over credit. In order for our victory garden to succeed, I shall have ot keep our own slender credit card sequestered deep in my wallet, and settle for back-breaking labor over nifty tools, even if they are secondhand.
posted by Lefty at 10:39 AM
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