Monday, February 26, 2007

American Gothic

When I mentioned to the lady who cuts my hair that Christine was contemplating a garden this spring, she suggested that we pose beside it for a photograph mimicing American Gothic.

She was surpised at my lack of enthusiasm for that notion.

It's not a bad idea, I guess, but it doesn't quite appeal to my twisted humor, though you'd think it would. If I warm to it, I'll just make one in Photoshop.

Photos aside, I am enthused about doing a little Square Foot Gardening, the approach Christine has determined we should pursue.

I never knew dirt could be so complicated, but we'll arrive at the right soil mixture eventually.

I fix a lot of salads, so the thought of some fresh produce as an enhancement is a plus, and we haven't had a garden in years. (P.J. O'Rourke once noted some jalapenos can turn a salad into a practical joke.)

Christine sees virtue in doing our own garden vs. buying things shipped thousands of miles, and she's found some heirloom plants we'll be using from Seed Savers Exchange.

Heirloom plants, it seems, are those that, for whatever reason, are not commercial in contemporary times. From what I can tell part of the problem is you have a lot of plants that don't spring up in the color we've come to expect tomatos to be.

Growing some purple tomatos and blue potatos does appeal to my sense of the slightly askew, so we'll see how this goes and maybe I'll have some photos around mid-July.

6 comments:

Drizel said...

gardening is way fun:)

Charles Gramlich said...

We talked about gardening at my writing group last night. With all due respect to Etain, I refuse to garden. I grew up on a farm where we often got up a couple of hours before school so we could work in one of the four gardens we typically grew. I picked okra until the itch and slime worked through my long sleeve shirt, shelled peas until my thumbnail was loose, hoed and raked and dug and weeded until my hands and knees felt like sausage. I'm done.

RK Sterling said...

Oh, cool! Good luck with that. I understand Charles' reticence - I remember those kinds of gardens. But a little one for a few of my own goodies - yeah, I could handle that. I hope you have a wonderful harvest. :)

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

hey, sid. turns out computers went out all over the place at 8:20 sat, even here at work. hopefully, i'll have the evil thing back before too long. can you take a look at the html info for the photos in my last blog and see if you can find out why they aren't showing? on another note, i did get my grandparents to pose in a kinda sorta american gothic pose, with one swinging a sledgehammer and the other with pruning shears.

Drizel said...

no offence take C......I did not have any bad experiences with gardens so I am still feel good about it, but not all ppl, like it:)

Sidney said...

I thought my dad's garden was something of a nightmare when I was a kid, Charles, but you win. We lived in a subdivision and my dad bought the lot next door. He and my uncle farmed half of it and I had to help out but it wasn't quite that bad.

But why, why does anyone plant okra? My dad did it too. It's horrible to pick and has to be fried beyond recognition to become marginally edible. Boiled it's like having a tomato cutworm on your plate.

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