The Portal to Boomeranger World

Gardening: Mary's Little Eggplant

Friends by Proxy Dirt

In the nursery rhyme of my child hood, Mary had a little lamb. But my new friend and gardening buddy, Mary has a little eggplant. And she is as proud and loving of it as if it were her woolly cuddly lamb.

Mary came to me this spring through a mutual sister gardening pal and

in response to my invitation to have someone or a few someones share my yard for gardening.

As our young publishing company and www.thimbleberrypress.com (and please, become its fan on facebook) has begun to develop, my kid grow up and need more of my time during her teen years, and the demands of this blog increase, my gardening time has diminished. I have sat longing to go outside and get my hands on the dirt...but other duties at the keyboard and steering wheel have called. So I have been thrilled to have Mary come to garden.

Mary is a dear. And a brilliant dear--who is also a medieval scholar. I love to look out my bathroom window and see her folding bike parked beside the sheds and see her loving her plants--herbs, flowers and vegetables into bloom and fruition. I sometimes feel that I am out there with my hands in the dirt instead of hers. We are friends by proxy--proxy dirt.

That Dear Little Eggplant

Mary sent me these eggplant photos two days ago and I was as thrilled as if I were at a birthing! Here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, through the magic of the internet..and it does seem magic to me still, I can share in the thrill of that first vegelette transforming from bloom to tiny egglette. That is Mary's love and the trans formative amazement of dirt, rain and sun on a tiny seed to nurture it into its fulfillment.

Gardening has done that for me--even proxy gardening--taken the little seed of possible, and nourished it into becoming.

I think I will always be a becoming...we all always are really. It is a false premise that we become and then are finished. No--like Mary and my friendship and the little eggplant--we are all always becoming. And that is a delicious thing.

Hope in One Small Seed: Food Security and Yard Sharing

Gaining Food Security

My friend Dave has articulated a central issue that I'd not heard described other wise: Food Security. In the Keweenah Penisula, it would take a trucking collapse of only two weeks to starve the population of the entire peninsula, unless there were alternate local food production methods.And in a climate that regularly has winter about 7 months of the year--that is an important issue. How do you make people secure in their food supply? http://foodsecurity.org/

We have all seen those late at night Save the Children ads of starving kids in third world countries, but have you considered how close we are to being in that situation ourselves? http://www.fns.usda.gov/fsec/ ; http://www.answers.com/topic/food-security , http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodSecurity/measurement.htm How long would your food last if there were a power outage of weeks? Could you manage? I would for a few weeks--on my pantry, but then what?? I am not secure as were my grandparents who grew almost all their food, canned it and had supplies in the winter. But even they were dependent on stores for grains and sweetners.

Hope in One Small Seed

I feel the counsciousness shifting here in America. We seem to be growing and growing up after a prolonged childhood of bigger and more toys. Our unending greed for more and more toys has nearly destroyed us, but at the brink, we seemed to have pulled back. I see this as a small seed of hope that might be planted in the earth and in our hearts and minds to grow. 

I have offered my yard to people in my town who are in apartments http://eqtvconnect.ning.com/group/yardsharing; http://www.yardsharing.org/; http://www.wasatchgardens.org/yardsharing.html; . I have way too much and I want to share it with others to have a place to grow food http://www.sharingbackyards.com/. I have a small garden and want to share my earth abundance with those who don't. This year for the first time I have some one who is interested. this is a small seed planted and a small flowering of hope. There are so many people who are in apartments and so many people who have huge lawns. And lawns are a luxury and a waste. I am hoping that others will take me up on my offer and come share my abundance with me.

This is hope in one small seed.

Get A (Wine) Buzzzzz On---Organically

False Debate over Nourishing Vineyards

I'm always puzzled about the debate over organic VS non-organic farming/gardening practices.

That conversation/debate is now extending to organically grown grapes for wine making. Less than 60 years ago, almost everyone farmed everything organically. Synthetic fertilizers did not exist. Farmers used heavy mulches, green cover crops which were planted in the winter and then plowed under (winter rye and red clover being two favorites), and manure. That's the way my family farmed. We had good crops, healthy ones with few bugs or wilts, rich land and delicious smelling dirt!

And didn't all vineyards everywhere rely on these same practices as well? They must have. They had to have had, because there were no fertilizers other than cow, pig, chicken and horse manure. No waste, no want.

Organic = No sulphites

Thank you for honoring her."> I am not a wine expert, in fact one of the reason I rarely drink wine is that sulphites in most of today's wines give me galloping headaches and shooting eye pains. YUCK!! who would want to drink and feel so horrible? But the new organics may change my habits. It does sound nice to sit out on a summer evening with a chilled glass of white wine, good friends and a lovely sunset. Ummmmmmmmm.

Here is an interesting Forbes Article on this issue.  And one factor in longevity is tied to a small consumption daily of drink. Just make mine organic.