Word around the campfire is, the dollar is tanking. Unemployment is rising. The stock market is sputtering. And you can almost swear there's been somebody following you...and when you awoke this morning, there on the side car mirror was a bloody hook!
[enter dramatic music] DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN
It's getting pretty creepy out there.
But a handful of important things have not changed.
The sun, being one Astronomical Unit away has yet to be affected by the housing market and continues to thwart the Dow Jones Industrial average as it manages to pour a consistent flow of energy onto the Earth.
Plant matter, in petulant anti-capitalist fashion will continue to photosynthesize sunlight into sugars like the freeloading slackers they are.
Bovine poo will continue to have a high nutrient value.
And the Republicans will keep sending us an endless supply of it with every utterance. BullShit from from the heavens! We're saved!
This year I'm hedging my bets on the bounty of the sun, manure, and hot microbial decomposition. As soon as the wee one awakens from his nap, my two boys and I are going to have a garden adventure. Maybe we can pretend we're the first family.
Since I established my vegetable garden three years ago, it has always had a fairly pitiable yield for its size. But each year I stand atop my plat of dirt and defiantly proclaim "THIS YEAR! THIS year I shall have the supreme garden!!!"
Last year, in addition to being a dry year the deer got wise to my activities and decided to take their "bonuses" from my garden, veggies, shoots, plant tips and all. Not a SINGLE tomato all year. Not one!
This year, though, is going to be different. This year we're going all out. If ONE THING has positive growth this year, it's going to be my dragon carrots, Japanese trifele tomatoes, chioggia beets, and calypso beans!
YES WE CAN!!
**shakes fist at the air**
My Seed Savers Exchange order shipped on Thursday.
The goal this year is to do more of this (since SOMEBODY ate my tomatoes these came from the farmer's market):
This is the sort of investment I can get behind. Drop my seeds into the ground 1" to 1.5" under nourishing soil, 8 to 10 inches apart, add water, let the sunlight do its thing, keep the weeds at bay, and stow away the bounty in cans for the metaphorical and actual winter.
To keep the nocturnal AIG execs, er, I mean DEER from plundering my harvest the boy and I will be fortifying the perimeter with a 6 foot high fence made of wooden posts and wire. And to fortify the soil...my wise investment of cow poo.
Beet harvest.