GETTING LETTUCE
The biggest difference between getting into an expensive SUV with expensive tires, expensive fuel and costly insurance (to say nothing of loan interest and depreciation) to spend an hour or so driving there and back through a smog of hazardous traffic salted with road rage to find a parking space in the vast lot of the megamall with the airplane-hangar supermarket where with money I earn at a job in an office I commute to daily I can purchase some expensive, inorganic, agribusiness-grown, Monsanto Roundup®ped and irradiated lettuce picked 4 or more days ago by a city block of a machine on the other side of the continent and shipped 3 or more days ago in refrigerated containers filled with antiripening gases and antifungal whatevers via expensive train and expensive truck also using expensive fuel and operated 24/7 by sleepless guys day and night across the nation to get the lettuce near where I can buy it and so support the vast vegetable infrastructure by having some salad for lunch, and just going right now, on my own two legs, out into the sunny afternoon of my organic garden that I have nurtured with my own two hands and getting some lettuce whenever I want it, is, apart from the sheer simplicity, untampered flavor, freshness, beauty and natural satisfaction of it all (to say nothing of the non-toxicity), is the refreshing absence of the madness so deeply ingrained in the former approach.
The biggest difference between getting into an expensive SUV with expensive tires, expensive fuel and costly insurance (to say nothing of loan interest and depreciation) to spend an hour or so driving there and back through a smog of hazardous traffic salted with road rage to find a parking space in the vast lot of the megamall with the airplane-hangar supermarket where with money I earn at a job in an office I commute to daily I can purchase some expensive, inorganic, agribusiness-grown, Monsanto Roundup®ped and irradiated lettuce picked 4 or more days ago by a city block of a machine on the other side of the continent and shipped 3 or more days ago in refrigerated containers filled with antiripening gases and antifungal whatevers via expensive train and expensive truck also using expensive fuel and operated 24/7 by sleepless guys day and night across the nation to get the lettuce near where I can buy it and so support the vast vegetable infrastructure by having some salad for lunch, and just going right now, on my own two legs, out into the sunny afternoon of my organic garden that I have nurtured with my own two hands and getting some lettuce whenever I want it, is, apart from the sheer simplicity, untampered flavor, freshness, beauty and natural satisfaction of it all (to say nothing of the non-toxicity), is the refreshing absence of the madness so deeply ingrained in the former approach.
10 comments:
I love your blog but I must say I'm surprised to find that I can't read the comments section unless the "cookie" security is moved from "medium" to "medium high"?
Wembley
Thanks for the kind words Wembley. As to the cookie question, comments on PLM involve no security at all, let alone medium high, unless maybe you're accessing from a really conservative computer...
I wondered where you were going but like very much your final destination! Hear, Hear!!!
Dear anonymous: It's the 'cookie toxicity' that is causing the problem. (sorry,,I just couldn't resist.
At Robert: You have just inspired me to plant a small garden. Of course that will mean a vigilent watch for all the critters around here that will love to help me harvest. Deer, bunnies, slugs,...
Water....if only I would remember to water.
Here Here! I am watching the series on animals by Isabella Rossellini, sort of a porn version of going green and she just finished a session with that chef Mario Battali on how to eat ethically. You would have liked it, maybe.
CAtmoma J, You have to get that fence UP! and quit feeding the blind deer that comes around. ;) (she just last night told me that SOMETHING ate her pansies that she had on her porch)
My garden is fenced and fertilized with natural stuff, but alas, the sun wont come out and warm the ground long enough for the seed to sprout! Global warming BAH!
If farmers failed to roundup around their perimeters, who would be left to buy pesticide-resistant vegetable seeds?
Why, the whole idea is just uncorporatic.
I've got some lettuce planted, but cold as it is, it's going to be awhile before I get any. I'm making do with chives, baby dandelion greens and bean sprouts mixed into that yukky transported (if a little less far) lettuce.
To be at one with our plants. I have found this year's praying mantis to join my inside section of plants, after having a delightful time last year with my first free-range praying mantis, named Polly. I let one of my pen pals name this one Pollyanna. Now if we could just get some rain here in Texas.
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