The Garden

Wandering Into The Wilds

I’m a lazy gardener at best. My boyfriend argues otherwise, but when it comes to the kind of people who intensely labor over every little teeny, tiny weed and every dead flower head, day after day, and those who just stuff whatever into the ground and hope it grows, well… that second person is me. I tell the seedlings that if they don’t grow in my garden that they’re simply not fit to live!;-)

Pre-bagged poop is my friends, timed soaker hoses are my biggest allies, cause, darn it all, if I’ve been up late jamming tunes with the boys, I’ll be darned if I’m gonna get up at 5 AM and hand water all the vegetables. Sleep and blackout shades come first,

So, it might seem kind of odd that I am passionate about growing as much food as I able to in my Seattle

Fruits of Deb's Labor

front yard. But I am. The fact that by the time most Northern Americans eat the items on their dinner plates, those items- meaning food- have travelled an average of 1500 miles to get there. And while this isn’t odd at all for those food stuffs we can’t grown in America, like cacao beans (chocolate ) and bananas , it makes no sense that the food stuff our land is capable of growing right *here*, with in 100-300miles of home, is imported. Ugh!

After reading The Hundred Mile Diet last year by James McKinnon and Alisa Smith, I really got “sober”. Like the authors, who decided to investigate deeply just where their food came form and how far it travelled, I began to get serious about reading labels- because now, even more important than what chemicals were or were not in my food, I wanted to know how many gallons of fuel it took to get that apple in my mouth.

How Corny!

Furthermore, I do *not* want apples imported from New Zealand. Why on earth should I be eating imported apples from New Zealand when apples are main crop of my own state, the beautiful State of Washington, where I Iive, where I love living ,where pay taxes, and that I support?

I’ll be So I planted a huge garden his summer. And while I have not become the perfect “locovore” (I love bananas too much) I’ll be damned if I *ever* get suckered into buying buy a vegetable or fruit that can be grown *right here* from somewhere else other than but *from* here. That’s a lot of saved CO2!

Farmers- markets- here I come! Especially the one in my front yard!

-Deb :-0