From The Old Farmer's Almanac.
There must be Spring in the Air.I have been shopping today and started to clean the kitchen and Oven ready for baking Angel cakes, and a roast dinner tomorrow. The oven was probably last cleaned when the original ghostly gardener layed out the slabs and raised border!I know, I know, I KNOW! Most of you are way ahead of me here. But what can I say? I have a stack of books to read that resembles the Leaning Tower, I kid you not. You know that tee shirt: So many books, so little time? I am all over that.
Anyway, I started Barbara Kingsolver’s new book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle last night and made it as far as page 6 and didn’t put it down - it fell on my face when I fell asleep. I want to take a magic marker and highlight something on every single page, sometimes two or three comments on every single page. I LOVED The Poisonwood Bible, Prodigal Summer, etc, but I think this is her best work yet. I believe its because she is writing in her own voice, telling a personal story, and it comes through, direct and clear, often glib, yet matter of fact. I appreciate that.
Again, I am just getting started, but this strikes me as the perfect companion book to Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dillema and should scare the crap out of folks. I love it when she refers to the Farm Bill as the Farm Kill, and the book was copyrighted in 2005. Aren’t we in the same damn boat this year?
Also on the reading table: Pollan’s new “In Defense of Food,” and “Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally,” by Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon.
The crowd is getting louder about eating locally. TV programmers are listening. Already folks are raving about Jamie Oliver at Home, the cutie pie Brit cook and restauranteur dishes from his potager all fresh and colorful like. Here’s a little You Tube preview for your viewing pleasure, click right here.. In the Boise viewing area, you can catch the show starting Saturday morning at 10:30 am on the Food Network.
Look for more grooviness in the world of vegetable gardening at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle. You heard it here first (or tenth, but you heard it/read it), veggie gardening rocks. To borrow a little hippie phrase from the 60’s and 70’s: “……dude, grow your own”.
My blog, which started as just a way for me to talk to my potential customers as blossomed into something more. I realized this after someone ended up at my site after Googgling “we want to start a nursery”. Low and behold it is, as of this writing the first site to show up. I have been getting more and more interest from people who want to know what it means to start and run a small nursery or garden center. Of course I am still trying to figure that out, but I do realize that some of the stuff I take for granted is of great interest to someone just starting out.
This year I am going to try and give you a feel for what some of the day to day issues that come up in a small garden center are. Maybe it will help you decide if this business is right for you. I don’t have all the answers. No nursery person does. Its through sharing that we will all be more successful in our efforts. I have received invaluable advice from this blog. Fellow nuserypeople as well as enthusiastic gardeners have given me advice as well as inspiration which we have acted on. Being open this spring seven days a week was one such result of reader feedback.
I invite everyone to participate. If you are a gardener but don’t feel your ideas would be appreciated by a professional, you are wrong! Its your advice that I need to help design a better garden center experience. I also appreciate professional advice from people who have been where I find myself now in my garden center career. Realize that while I appreciate your advice there are others who are visiting this blog who are also listening and learning. By helping me you will be helping lots of people who still find this profession interesting and worth while. The challenges are many but through our “connection” we will be able to meet those challenges and enthusiastically work together to create the “garden scene” of the future. I see a gardening revolution taking place as we speak! Revolutions are generally messy and uncertain, but at the other end I see a stronger “garden scene” that we will all remember because we we’re there at the Renaissance.
All right, enough of that. Monica is giving me that look that says “get off that computer and let’s get to work”. It’s off to the first working day of the new year. Cheers!
