(Via grow this)

Posted by admin to Cabbage, Total Crisis Panic Button, Walter Benjamin, politics on 2008-03-05, 11:47:00

"The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the 'state of emergency' in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the struggle against Fascism... The current amazement that the things we are experiencing are 'still' possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. This amazement is not the beginning of knowledge--unless it is the knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable."
--Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," (Spring, 1940) trans. Harry Zohn.

Ummm, excuse me? What business does a gardening blog have stomping through the muck of politics? I’m glad you asked that question. Apart from a vague and sometimes futile effort to be more green in the portion of my “lifestyle” that doesn’t involve gardening, I rarely stray from my garden in this blog.

Although I prefer to blog under an alias signifying sadness and pain, actually I’m a pretty up-beat citizen. But mad predictions about Fascism? Made in Germany in 1940? You might think those were scary times, albeit with little apparent relevance to gardening. I think these are scary times too.

My blog has a mission statement: I think, therefore I garden. So today’s quote isn’t about gardening; it’s about thinking. Benjamin is fomenting violent revolution against The Man. (When I first saw that expression many years ago, I thought it was “fermenting” violence, which imparted a hint of sweet intoxication to the war. Too bad.)

Here’s what I think. Advocating the violent overthrow of a mad man leading his nation into global disaster, is as crazy as advocating chemical warfare in my vegetable garden. A final solution is always so tempting in the midst of an interminable warfare. The news in the world beyond my backyard gate is dire. The wars continue, and I am beginning to realize that people die in wars.

Just like I now realize the poisons I used to kill the bugs could end up killing me. I have lost 3/5ths of my cabbage. Yeah, that’s a measly 2 shrunken red cabbage heads out of five. The white flies took the others, one-by-one. I tried washing them away with soapy water, but they outnumbered me, they overcame me. I could declare war and spray them all with pesticides, but I’m trying peaceful coexistence instead. Ironic: I can barely bring myself kill tiny flies, and yet I’m managing to kill the entire planet.

And one final thought: run for your life! Or, try to stop being afraid all the time. The hand sanitizers at the grocery store are tacked to a post near the shopping cart coral. We may not be able to find Bin Laden, but by God, we’ll kill those invisible viruses with antibiotics. (Hint, antibiotics kill bacteria, not viruses).

We’re afraid of germs we can’t see with the naked eye AND we’re pounding the Total Crisis Panic Button in insane terror fomented by our own leaders. This is amazing to me. Why should I sweat over some small crumb-sized bugs in the cabbage any more than I worry about masked gunmen on the highways and byways? This is no time to panic.

(Via grow this)

Posted by admin to Cabbage, kale, lemon, lime, orange, rainbow, rosemary on 2008-02-27, 16:08:00

“Surprise me!”
Jean Cocteau (1889 – 1963)

Today I went to the nearby public Garden where I volunteer. I was looking for a rainbow. Here’s what I found:

(Via grow this)

Posted by admin to Cabbage, GMO, William Butler Yeats on 2008-02-08, 10:59:00

“There’s many a strong farmer
Whose heart would break in two,
If he could see the townland
That we are riding to;
Boughs have their fruit and blossom
At all times of the year;
Rivers are running over
With red beer and brown beer.”
- William Butler Yeats, The Happy Townland

My lovely red cabbages are covered with white flies. I’ve salvaged lettuce, and the root crops (a few beets and last year’s potatoes) may survive long enough to eat. There will be more lettuce, even though I harvest a small salad daily. But, it’s back to the farmer’s market for the rest of my winter vegetable crops, and for any other produce I desire. Yesterday I finally gave in and bought some grapes from Chile. I can buy any vegetable or fruit at all times of the year without having to consider what might be “in season” locally.

Something has gone badly wrong with the state of agriculture in America – the disease, drugs, animal torture. Corporate dairy farms put us in danger of becoming mad cows unless we eat exactly what they tell us to eat. Panicked consumers are held hostage by terrorists in big pharmaceutical companies who sell us the drugs they make us need. Farmers must pay licenses to re-plant Genetically Modified Organisms growing from Monsanto’s hybrid seeds. These same farmers created the parent plants of Monsanto’s licensed mutant progeny.

Cloned cows and licensed lettuce, mutants modified by Monsanto. This has become our food.

Our vegetables and fruits and grains are mostly grown in fields doused with pesticides, hormones, antibiotics. Our harvests are tainted by chemical fertilizers, laced with pollutants, and possibly carcinogens. Our children eat produce grown for its looks rather than its nutritional value. Our food is selected by laboratory chemists whose mathematical formulas include how far the product will be shipped, and how long it can be stored without sacrificing its youthful good looks. What we buy to eat is often wrapped in stiff cellophane and vacuum sealed with an inert gas to retard spoilage.

Monsanto sues small farmers whom they accuse of using their proprietary hybrid seed without buying a license to plant it. Monsanto warns the FDA that dairies who dare to label their milk products as “hormone-free” or “not grown with antibiotics or GM organisms” are endangering the eating consumer by confusing them with misleading labels. The FDA does not require that Monsanto’s dairy products grown with their chemicals and GMOs must be so labeled.

I don’t know why I’m ranting about Monsanto when it was white flies that got to my cabbage. I should have sprayed the entire yard with pesticide. Then at least, I’d have cabbage to enjoy…

(Via grow this)

Posted by admin to Alcaito's Emblems, Cabbage on 2008-01-21, 14:54:00

"Mind, not outward form, prevails.

"A fox entered a theatre director's store-room, and found a human head skillfully finished, so elegantly made that the only thing wanting was breathing; in other ways it was like a living creature. Taking it up in her paws, she said: 'Oh, what a head is this! - But it has no brain!'" Alciato's Emblems #189

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve said that about cabbage, I’d be able to buy a cup of coffee, if I also had about five bucks. My garden contains much that is planned and much that is beautiful. Unfortunately, that which is planned is not beautiful and that which is beautiful is not planned. My horticultural education has been erratic, and mostly of the “now see what you’ve done” type. Which, you might think, would discourage me from ever ordering another packet of seeds from a catalog based on the flower or leaf color.

But if it’s true that there’s no teacher like experience, it’s safe to say that my gardening experiences have been dripping with wisdom. I’ve learned so much about what not to do, I’m almost out of mistakes. Pretty soon, the only stuff left for me to try will be all the right plants and the right ways of growing them. While reading garden books suffices in winter to replace actual gardening, I am still determined to cultivate my garden my way once I get back outside.

Besides, everything you ever read in any horticultural book had to first be learned from experience. For example, it was once believed that mistletoe (Viscum album) grew from bird droppings because it only grew high up in trees, never grew on the ground. Of course, we now know that mistletoe is spontaneously generated from the flies that grow in garbage, and from there, they fly up into trees to get their bearings, leaving small mistletoe seeds that also spontaneously generate in garbage with the flies. So don’t believe everything you read.

I’m ordering seeds anyway. New seed catalogs fill my empty head with visions of gardens to come. The pictures are so lovely, they often prevail over reason. I believe that’s exactly what my garden should do. While I absolutely follow the zone restrictions, most of my selection decisions are often based on what I find beautiful. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

(Via washingtonpost.com - A Cook's Garden by Barbara Damrosch)

Posted by admin to Cabbage, Italy, John Scheepers Inc., Joy, Northern Ireland, Savoy, The, of on 2007-11-07, 21:00:00

For the life of me, I can't figure it out. The produce bins aren't piled high with Savoy cabbage, even though this is the perfect time of year to enjoy it. Granted, it has a more delicate leaf and therefore does not keep or ship as well as hard-head types. But then, neither does lettuce. My friend Pauline, a transplant from Northern Ireland, is peeved by the lack of Savoy cabbage in her adopted home. Her mother would come home and announce grandly, "I've bought us a nice Savoy," as if it were a bag of gold nuggets. "Why can't I buy one here?" Pauline wails.