Sunday, March 11, 2007

eat locally

i have been reading a new (well, actually, yet-to-be-released) book by barbara kingsolver. i would put a link, but i couldn't really find much info on the web other than where to pre-order it. anyways, the book is about how she and her family took on the adventure of eating only locally produced food for a whole year. it's fairly interesting and has gotten me thinking a lot about what we eat and where it comes from. i won't get on that whole tangent here, except to say, next time you go to the grocery store start looking at where your food comes from. it's easy to see how we spend more fossil fuels on transporting food than we do driving our cars.

so anyways, this book along with the really nice weather this weekend got me and chris out to start our very own garden. this is something that we've been wanting to do for years but up to this point we've not had the ability. so in hopes of having just a few little snippets from our own side yard this spring and summer, and just because we find working in the yard fun, we spent our sunday working on this:

our little garden


i know; it doesn't look like much now. that's because we don't have anything planted in the bed. we'll do some planting next weekend. we're thinking tomatoes (of course), okra, beans, herbs, and summer squash. but we'll see what we can find at the farmer's market next weekend. even though chris thinks the design of the garden is "ugly", i think it's beautiful and can't wait to see things start peaking out of the soil!

we must be on the right track because after creating the garden i went to the grocery store tonight and saw last week's cover story for time magazine.

4 comments:

Baldman76 said...

It's not that I "hate" the garden, it's just that am a stickler for things "lining up" with other things. And the garden is at an angle off the side of the house, rather than parallel to the side, and it bugs me. I'll get over it.

ALSO, the little green strips we bought for the border all broke when I was putting them in the ground and then the one side got all wobbly and it pissed me off...sigh, it just epitomized lots of little things that bug me. Alas.

And it doesn't look like much, but that little 4x4 plot was dug out about six inches down, then refilled to about 2p3 inches above ground, so there was some actual work involved. And ain't my wifey cute posing by the garden? (Yes, she is.)

And the Kingsolver book is a uncorrcted proof of a book that doesn't come out for another month or two. One of the benefits of working in a library.

Anonymous said...

Nope, there's nothing anal about this family, is there? Because, the poles didn't exactly line up for the dog yard, we should have used the newer parts for the part near the yard, the fence is lower on one side than the other, the hinge isn't quite where it needs to be. Things I kept hearing over and over from David! Me, just get the damn fence up to put the damn dog in!! But,there's that "apple" analogy coming into play there, isn't it??? You, boys.
You know, when that garden starts producing, you won't care WHERE it is and if it lines up!!!And I know that it is hard work! I think I am going to try to plant a couple of tomato plants and maybe have a strawberry hanging basket. I am sure they will die, however!!
And yes, Katie is adorable in that picture. I commented on that on the flickr page. A real cutie patootie!!!!

Anonymous said...

I think it looks awesome!!!! I am jealous of your garden!!! Are you still going the CSA thing too? By the way, I just pre-ordered that book!!! Are you going to Bean town?

Waldie said...

we are in the hunt for a new community supported farm for this year. there are now three in the area, which are 2 more than there were when we did it 2 years ago. i'm so excited about that! you'll love the book! would really appreciate your thoughts on this whole debate.

and no:( we are not going to beantown. i'll send you an email about that.