Quote of the Day: A Carrot is a Carrot
“Even though most people can easily discern the quality difference between brands of automobiles or appliances, that same astuteness, with the exception of visible cosmetic quality, does not seem to be applied to vegetables. The myth has been successfully planted in the public mind (possible for the benefit of the homogeneous supermarkets) that biological quality differences do not exist and a carrot is a carrot is a carrot.”
Eliot Coleman (The Winter Harvest Handbook)
Once you start eating fresh local or homegrown vegetables, you can easily tell the difference between them and homogenous supermarket vegetables. The ones at the grocery store may be more perfect, without blemish, all shaped the same and all look the same. But an ugly tomato from my garden is certainly more lovely than a supermarket tomato. And can you get any better than fresh sweet corn from the side of the road?
Can you tell a difference between supermarket fruits and vegetables and those from the farmer’s market or your back yard?
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Quote of the Day: Rand B. Lee
Needless to say, a five by five foot plot of sweet corn is not going to feed many people for very long. But that is not why urban backyard gardeners create such things.
They create such things to remind themselves that once the world was a soil world, a bee world, a bird world and a seed world, not the concrete thing it has become.
Rand B. Lee (Pleasures of the Cottage Garden)
We live in a technology saturated society surrounded by flat images. So often we spend our time looking at photos or watching movies instead of getting out and enjoying the real thing. I garden because I like to step away from my computer and get out into the soil, bird, bee and seed world.
Do you garden to help balance out the concrete world we live in?
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A Little TLC
This sewing machine belonged to my great grandmother. It was passed down to my mom and she gave it to me. It’s been a little mistreated over the years beginning with my great grandma. As it seems so many people did, she used it as a plant stand, so it has the telltale signs with ringed water stains on the top. I’ve been wanting to clean it up and give it a coat of protective oil for a while, I just haven’t had the time.
On Sunday evening I took it outside, cleaned it up, and gave it a protective coat of linseed oil. The nice thing about linseed oil is that you can use it on everything, even the metal parts. It shines now, not quite as it did in it’s heyday but as I always say, “It’s not perfect but it has character!”.
I do love this piece of furniture, not just because it’s a sewing machine and I love to sew, but because it’s a piece of family history. It still has bits and pieces in the drawers that were my great grandma’s; needles, scrap fabric, wooden thread spools, and used zippers. All those things we don’t really save to reuse now, but they did then.
Now that it’s all cleaned up it will go in my living room. I won’t put plants on it unless they have a protective dish or cork under them.
Do you have a treasured piece of furniture with family history?
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Quote of the Day: Elizabeth David
“Every day holds the possibility of a miracle.”
~ Elizabeth David
This time of year the garden changes daily, new things are blooming and the world is coming alive. Every time I got outside I see something new and exciting. The world of brown is being transformed into a world of color each and every day. Here are a few shots from my garden this past week.
I’m certainly enjoying this lovely time. Spring is the best time for gardening, the weather is perfect, it’s exciting, there are few weeds and all the chores are fun. I’m making sure to enjoy the most of these early days in the garden. Soon enough the drudgery of weeding and the hot sticky weather will be upon us.
What miracles are happening in your garden this week?
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Would You Rather?
Yesterday I spent the morning working outside, edging a new garden area and getting it ready for a cover crop. When it got hot in the afternoon I decided to stay inside spring cleaning the living room and cleaning the floors in the rest of the house.
When I was mopping the laundry room I noticed that the floor could be stripped and rewaxed. I tried to think the last time I’d done this task and I couldn’t remember, it’s been at least 2 years. I had to chuckle because I said, “Oh well, it looks OK and I don’t mind that it’s not shiny.” Six or seven years ago I stripped and waxed the floors every couple months. The floors were vacuumed and mopped several time a week and my house was really neat and tidy all the time.
The truth is that as much as we’d like to do it all, we just can’t. When we start a new hobby the time needs to come from somewhere. Now that I spend a lot of time gardening my house shows the change of interest. The gardens are much nicer and bigger than they used to be and the floors aren’t as spotless.
The house still gets cleaned, but it goes longer between cleanings, especially if we haven’t had a rainy day. At this stage in my life, I’d much rather have fresh tomatoes than a bright white freshly waxed floor.
So, what about you, would you rather clean or garden?
