No excuse actually

Okay, so we're not all farmers.

We don't all want to get up at 0 dark hundred to milk Bossie the cow or feed the chickens.

Few of us have one of those cool John Deere green machine tractors with a bazillion things to hook to the power take off.  Never mind that most of us don't even have a "back 40" to plow and plant and use the aforementioned tractor on.

As a matter of fact, probably none of us could even afford the "economy" version!

So, no one could expect us to plant anything that would help feed the family, right?

You know I'm going to say "wrong"!

Back to the basics:

Surely there is a small area of "dirt" where you could plant a few things.  Even if it's just as an exercise to see if you might enjoy gardening - just on a small scale of course.  Nothing scary here, folks!

So what is almost fool proof yet provides clean, healthy additions to your family's diet?

Radishes & lettuce - easy to grow even in a pot!

Green beans -  just a short raised bed made from scrap lumber - nothing very labor intensive here.  And this short bed will produce an amazing amount of beans.  And they are so not like the canned ones!

Peas -  easy peesy!  Plant them as early as you can work the ground and stand back!  You don't need a fancy fence:  you can stick broken off branches in the ground and the plants will cling to them.  And we certainly have enough broken branches after this spring!

Lettuce -  tuck it in the end of the row of beans, put it around the radishes - or make it a home of it's own!

All of the above are items easy to start from seed.  If you are unsure of your ability to leap into the seed to table routine, there are lots of plants that come all ready to just sit out on the deck/lawn/whatever and all you'd have to do is keep them watered!

Now, surely something in the above list tickles your fancy - or at least your gardening instincts?  We all fall into the trap of "run to the store and throw money at it" when we think of food.  It can be as easy as walking out your door and picking it out of the garden.  Knowing where it came from and how it was raised (not to mention that it is pesticide free) is worth far more than the money involved.

I keep coming back to the fact that today's world is an uncertain one - nothing is as stable as it used to be.  Not the governments, not the atmosphere and surely not our lives.  Putting a seed in the ground and raising even a small portion of your food can give you a feeling of control in a world where so many of us have no control over much of anything!

Go for it - there really is no excuse actually!

Do we need all this "stuff"?

Chanced across this article today - horrifying to think this is probably just the tip of the (plastic) iceberg :(

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/henderson-island-38m-pieces-trash-washed-ashore-pacific-ocean-n759926

Before we buy plastic items perhaps we should (a) think if we really need it (not just want it) and (b) is there a biodegradable substitute we can get instead?

I think we all need to pony up and make a difference!

Even if it's only lettuce

It's been a lousy spring in my part of the world - weather-wise if nothing else.  I started out with high hopes as usual:  planted my peas way back in April and they actually came up in spite of all the cold and rain.

Then just about the time I was getting ready to get serious about the vegetable gardens, the weather tanked.  I mean it went straight to the proverbial hell in a hand basket.  Cold, snow, rain, harsh east wind, more rain....hard to tell this April from last November!

Planted beets and waited:  and waited.....and lurked over the rows....and waited.

I replanted them yesterday although I had seen a couple of beet-like sprouts in the rows.  But I suspect most of the seeds had rotted in the ground from all the rain and cold.

In the meantime I planted lettuce - several varieties of lettuce.  And lo and behold, they all came up and flourished in spite of the weather.  Are they big enough to pick yet?  Of course not.  Are they at least big enough so I know they are growing?  You bet!  Does it give me hope that eventually other things will sprout and grow?  Absolutely.

So, short and sweet:  if you can't do anything else to relieve your depression and sadness with the way the world, your life and the weather are going?

Plant lettuce.

It grows.