So, I am sitting here enjoying my morning coffee, the type of which I sorely missed while away this weekend, and I heard on NPR a story about how more people are "urban gardening" and how that's great- until you try to grow a garden in your front yard.
You have to avoid where there may be digging or shoveling going on, and you have to avoid where utilities go, and all this makes sense to me. But then, these people decided to avoid those things and grow their garden in their front yard, and imagine, the town council people came down hard on them for growing a garden on a parkway?
I don't get it. Remember those victory gardens, peeps? (Well, neither do I because I also am not that old, but I have heard and read of them.) Here we are in Hard Times, and people need to eat -not have to eat, like the edict from the council that you have to avoid dadidastuff. But need to eat, as in if you don't you will eventually die.
Now, granted, we are not all going to die if we don't grow our own food, but isn't it pretty cool to think that people finally want to get off their asses in greater numbers and grow a garden so they can be a little more self-sufficient, as opposed to relying on trucks, microwaves, and so on? I think so. But apparently my libertarian leanings in that direction are not in keeping with the local governors of at least one burg in this great land.
Jeebus Cripes. What really is the world coming to? It scares the crap out of me sometimes- but more often, as the FFM will corroborate, just makes me mad.
Speaking of the FFM and gardens, here is a poem he sent last week that I like:
Patriotism
My country is this dirt
that gathers under my fingernails
when I am in the garden.
The quiet bacteria and fungi,
all the little insects and bugs
are my compatriots. They are
idealistic, always working together
for the common good.
I kneel on the earth
and pledge my allegiance
to all the dirt of the world,
to all of that soil which grows
flowers and food
for the just and unjust alike.
The soil does not care
what we think about or who we love.
It knows our true substance,
of what we are really made.
I stand my ground on this ground,
this ground which will
ultimately
recruit us all
to its side.
that gathers under my fingernails
when I am in the garden.
The quiet bacteria and fungi,
all the little insects and bugs
are my compatriots. They are
idealistic, always working together
for the common good.
I kneel on the earth
and pledge my allegiance
to all the dirt of the world,
to all of that soil which grows
flowers and food
for the just and unjust alike.
The soil does not care
what we think about or who we love.
It knows our true substance,
of what we are really made.
I stand my ground on this ground,
this ground which will
ultimately
recruit us all
to its side.
"Patriotism" by Ellie Schoenfeld, from The Dark Honey. © Clover Valley Press, 2009.
1 comment:
I'm not sure the reasoning for the ordinance, but I am aware of the preponderance of heavy metals that are deposited in the immediate vicinity of active roadways from passing automotive exhaust. Perhaps the concern of folks feeding themselves from produce grown on the verges of the roadway may be considered a public health risk, thus encouraging gardening on the sides or rear of lots, or even on the roof. Conjecture of course, but in the absence of facts, just make something up.
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