Deep Thoughts

February 15, 2012

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The Gleaners and I

Foraging dandelion blossoms.

This was originally written as a guest post on Free Range Chicken.

“My mother’d say, “Pick everything up so nothing gets wasted.” – from The Gleaners an I

I recently stumbled upon “The Gleaners and I,” a documentary that I first saw several years ago about the ancient tradition of gleaning, or rummaging for unwanted stuff. In the film, Agnes Varda follows many different types of people as they glean a variety of different things: primarily food that has been tossed away by farmers, city dwellers, and so forth, as well as objects, furniture, and whatnot that is used by people for their subsistence or turned into art. Through the film, the filmmaker herself is revealed as a gleaner of sorts: a gleaner of gleaners. And in gleaning these stories and experiences, she asks a lot of interesting questions about how we assign value to food and objects within a culture of commodification and over-commodification. Is commercial value meaningful, or arbitrary and shallow? What is beautiful? What is waste?

The story that is most poignant to me as an eater and a gardener is the first one that takes us to a potato field where tons of perfectly good, edible potatoes have been cast aside to rot as waste because they are too big, too small, or misshapen. The value placed on the potatoes that make it to market is purely aesthetic–they are unblemished and therefore deemed beautiful and commercially viable. It has nothing to do with nutritional value or taste.

Foraging early spring wild edibles in the pathways at my community garden. That’s my plot behind me.

As a gardener, I have hands on experience with food. I have a hand in its development and I see its progress from seed to harvest. I know what food looks like, feels like, and tastes like. Through this process, I am given an insight into what good food is and how to define it. Through the experience of being a producer, I become an educated consumer, and at times, the lessons of the garden have helped me to redefine “value” outside of the parameters of commodity in general. Beauty is messy, mangled, and imperfect. Some of the best things in life are free. My yearly income has absolutely no bearing on my value as a person. The fact that I can grow my own food is a skill that I can use for the rest of my life. Its value is limitless.

Watching this film again was a good reminder of these lessons that gardening has taught me. It was a reassertion of where I’ve been, who I am, and the life I have created for myself. It was a gift.

What life lessons has being a gardener taught you?

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January 30, 2012

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The Human Side of Plants

“All truths point to a universal truth; all the divisions of nature are closely akin to one another.”

Rancho la Puerta is a mostly media-free retreat that provides guests the opportunity to unplug from television and Internet for a week, as much or as little as they choose to do so. In its place, the ranch offer movie nights and an extensive book and music library that guests can patronize during their stay.

I brought plenty of books to last me through the week, as I do on all trips, but recognizing that they were primarily connected to work in some way, I ended up setting them aside in favor of some light fare that I found in the library. However, as a plant and nature nut, the line between work and play is nearly impossible to maintain. I could not help but find my way over to the library’s Baja ecology resources and guidebooks as I required help in identifying the foreign flora and fauna that lives on and around the ranch. I simply could not wait until we got home to begin researching the life nearby.

While in the library, Davin took some photos of the older books, and it was through him that I was introduced to “The Human Side of Plants” by Royal Dixon (1914), an early predecessor to books like The Secret Life of Plants that tried to uncover and prove sentience in plants scientifically.

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January 26, 2012

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Here I Am. This is Me.

I loved school as a kid. It got me away from the stresses of the house and into a place where I was free to indulge in my love for reading and learning. While the social dynamics of the playground are rarely easy for any of us to navigate, school opened my mind to possibilities, to a world I couldn’t have imagined from within the fear-filled confinement of a dysfunctional family. What I loved most, more than free time in the library or the hours we spent huddled on the floor as the teacher read aloud, was Show and Tell. While, I know that giving presentations was a part of all grades, I remember Show and Tell in grade one best.

Mine was an open-concept school, wherein the grade one class was an amalgamation of two classrooms and two teachers. We sat at tables of six students rather than individual desks, and you had to wait patiently for the weekly Show and Tell presentations to come around to your table. The wait was gruelling and I would spend the weeks and days before my turn came up assessing the contents of my room, searching for the perfect thing — the thing I loved most — full of the hopeful anticipation of the moment when I would have the opportunity to share it with the class. There was so much that I couldn’t share and say as a kid, so many silences that needed to be observed carefully; pain and joyfulness that I could not reveal. Show and Tell was sometimes fraught with fear and anxiety, but overall it was a safe context in which I could reveal myself.

Jump ahead, oh, a few decades or so, and here I am doing a job that in many ways feels a lot like Show and Tell. The only difference being that instead of holding up an item of someone else’s making and proclaiming, “Here I am. This is me. This is what I love.” I have encapsulated it (me) within a creation that came from my own heart, mind, eyes, and hands. All of the hopeful joy, excitement, anxiety and fear is still a part of it.

In order to keep making things I need them to sell. Unfortunately, I am not the world’s greatest self-promoter. I may have loved presenting things in grade school, but as an adult, I find no joy or comfort in showing off my own work. Talking about it makes me sweat. It makes me feel slimy and narcissistic. I pretty much hate it.

So here I am, less than two weeks left until my third book, “Easy Growing: Organic Herbs and Edible Flowers from Small Spaces” goes out into the world and I am feeling the usual mix of emotions: excitement meets nausea. The trick I’ve found, and the one I am struggling to employ again is to focus on the making part of the process. I think back to the good times I had while I was imagining what this book would be. I recall in my mind the times I spent in the garden planting, taking pictures, harvesting, and testing recipes. I try to tap into my child brain and ask myself how she would feel and what she would say while standing up in front of the class with this book in hand.

I think she would like it very much. I think she would say, “Here I am. This is me. This is what I love.”

I hope you like it, too.

———–

My publisher, Clarkson Potter, has agreed to do a prelaunch giveaway of two copies of the book. I thought that in the spirit of my story it would be fun to make it a Show and Tell of sorts.

To Enter:

Simply post a comment via the box below. Please be sure to use a valid email address as I will be using that to contact the winners.

Please include a comment or link to a photo or post online of a plan or plans that you have this year that include herbs or edible flowers. It can be a picture or post about your garden from the last season, your garden as it is right now, or a garden grown by someone else. Garden season is underway for some and on the horizon for the rest of us. Let’s inspire each other and get excited about the forthcoming growing season!

If you’re feeling uninspired or uncomfortable sharing, you can always just type in, “Count me in” or something similar and that will work as your entry.

I will choose 2 winners at random on Friday, February 3, 2012 at 6pm EST.
Please note that this contest is only open to addresses in Canada and the Continental USA. (Sorry.)

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January 25, 2012

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What Were They Thinking?

Any therapist or self-help guru will tell you upfront, you can’t get into a relationship thinking that you can change the other person. They will tell you that this is an exhausting, destructive predicament that will lead to heartbreak rather than the outcome that you had wished for. They will warn you off of making a further commitment. So will your best friend, your mom, and your great aunt Jean.

Yesterday, I learned that the National Wildlife Federation has aligned with Scotts, the company responsible for manufacturing several garden and agricultural toxins, including Miracle Gro and Roundup. Those of you who are familiar with this beloved environmental protection group will likely have the same reaction that I did. How? How can they champion for the environment with a massive environmental polluter as a beneficiary?

Where was their great aunt Jean when they needed her?

I don’t always hold myself back before making snap assessments and judgements, and it was in the spirit of hearing how they could possibly justify this partnership that I tuned in at 1pm EST today to watch and listen as NWF CEO Larry Schweiger spoke live and online about the decision and what it means for the future of the organization forward. Although the presentation left me cold and disappointed, I can’t say I was surprised to hear a whole lot of spin as well as some pretty conflicting talking points. Like anyone that has entered into a bad relationship with the misguided assumption that they can affect change from the inside, it seems as if the NWF have their head in the clouds and don’t really know what in the hell they are doing.

To add further insult to injury, I was informed via Twitter later this afternoon that they had rearranged their Facebook page [note that my link takes you inside, beyond the splash page] so that you have to switch views to see the plethora of dissenting comments and making it a more convoluted process to add a comment. Tricksy. The message is clear, “We care what you, our members and supporters think about this partnership. Psych!”

So many people have already eloquently and passionately written about this debacle, including The Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens website that has published two very thorough posts on this case. [1 | 2]

I urge you to read the exhaustive background information that they’ve provided as well as some of the writers below. And as always your thoughts on this are very welcome in the comments below.

Further Reading:

Follow some of the discussion on Twitter via the #NWF hashtag.
Margaret at Away to Garden has a discussion going. This comment in particular makes a good point about the state of the gardening industry as it relates to sponsorship by chemical giants like Scotts.
Benjamin Vogt has written a very heartfelt summary of why this is important.

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December 30, 2011

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My Year in Gardening: 2011

I wrote a reflections post for 2010, and thought it would be good to end this year in the same way, especially since it gives me the opportunity to revisit some experiences that I did not cover very thoroughly.

[This photo and at top of page] My garden in September 2011.

Year Start

I started the year with a new D.I.Y grow-light system, more seedlings than I could handle, and a sloping bowling alley of scrubby grass and weeds that I hoped to transform into a garden. As a testament to my stubbornness and determination, I somehow managed (with a lot of help from Davin) to pull it off amidst finishing the editing, photography, and design of my third book, traveling to Thailand, working on a potential TV show, and other deadlines. I was so excited about the space I was out there any chance I could get, often until it go so dark that I couldn’t see anymore. I love having this new garden. It’s the best thing about 2011 and I can’t wait to get back out there in the spring to see what comes of the bulbs and perennial plantings, work on refining the overall layout, and discover a new year of wonders and experiments.

Year End

These last few months of the year have been trying and spiritually exhausting. I’m burned out and feel like a shell of my former self. It is for the first time that I find myself really relishing the idea of a year’s end and starting from a renewed and fresh perspective in January. More than ever I hope to walk into the new year feeling revitalized and ready to take on some of the ideas and adventures I’d like to work on in 2012. As you read this post, we are either on our way to or have arrived in the desert, where we will be enjoying some much-needed respite from the cold.

Friends, I’m going to touch, see, and be in the desert soon!!!!!! There aren’t enough exclamation points in the world to express my enthusiasm.

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