Respecting Food

I spent part of this dry morning–we’ve had so few over the last couple weeks–picking nasty little yellow leaves off my spinach.  With the recent rains came the leaf miners, taking shelter between the layers of spinach leaves and devouring all the nutrients as they did so.  If I intend to feed Tom and me on our kitchen garden this summer, I’ll have to get a bit more vicious with the wildlife.  Slugs, bugs, and birds–and birds are normally my pals–are at tug-o’-war with me over my baby veggies.  I’d been blaming the slugs for gnawing the leaves off my sunflower seedlings, forcing me to go through five packets of sunflowers in an attempt to see just a few of the joy-inducing giants to maturity.  But after an experiment and Tom’s keen observation, I realized that the birds were the rascals, and they really, really like those sunflower seeds, especially when they’re just sprouting, tender and nutty, and devoid of the shell.  I’m sure my feathered friends thought I was laying the table just for them.  I now have my sunflower seedlings tucked beneath a shield of netting and encircled by Sluggo, lest any other beastlet make a go for them.

Last night we had a salad made of mesclun and spinach thinings.  It was light, green, and gently crunchy.  I dressed it with a simple vinaigrette, and we munched it reflectively, rather taken by the oddness of home gardening in the modern age, where one can thoughtlessly toss out half a three-day-old pizza, but glean all the bitty sprouts of salad greens from a half-hour’s garden maintenance, pick off hundreds of tiny roots, and finally deliver the greens up on a dinner dish, with a smile of pride usually associated with the mom of the kid who kicked the goal.  Look, Honey!  Our lettuce seeds have grown two inches!  Dish up.

Growing a home garden makes me more respectful of food.  I look askance at the processed and packaged food-like items in the grocery store, knowing that I will soon have more fresh-off-the-vine sugar and snap peas than anyone with good sense could want.  Why would I buy something in a box, with ingredients that have been sourced from more parts of the globe than I will ever see, when I can pick a peck of dewy, crisp-cool pea pods from my own back yard?  Boxed and plastic-wrapped snack, three dollars; home-grown produce, priceless.  There’s no accounting for the value of a home garden, though, because it’s not an economic endeavor to begin with–at least not for me.  I can buy most everything I eat from my garden cheaper at the store or the Saturday market.  But the pleasure of watching the inert become life, a seed become dinner, and the exercise of patience and attention required to husband the process, are rewards beyond the cost/benefit analysis.  I know how to grow food.  That feels both magical and powerful.

Tom likes to point out how scary it is that we have products on the market called “cheese food” and “juice drink,” which are neither cheese nor juice.  The irony, he notes, is that the words “food” and “drink” are used to signal the products are not what they appear to be.  They are, in fact, non-cheese and non-juice.  But in this age of soy powder, high fructose corn syrup, and designer bottled water, who’s to say what’s food and drink anymore?  I’ll stick to the stuff I pick when I can.  (If we get some sun, it will rain strawberries here!)

So it’s June 1, and I need to hustle if I’m going to get my squashes planted in time for a pre-frost harvest in late September.  Gardening is as much deferred gratification as it is cultivation.  Fortunately, six rows of potatoes are sporting curly sprouts, so I only need to make my tube of Pringles Lites last until August.

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