The sun came out today and it suddenly felt, and smelled, like summer. Fortunately, I'd noticed a half a bottle of olives in the fridge when I was doing a clear-out. (No one else in my family throws anything away, and the moulds that grow when I'm on the other side of the world are truly magnificent.) For us, few things say
It often takes an outside eye to help one see things close at hand. Last night, a friend came to my house for supper. I'd made a rhubarb crumble, and mentioned that it really should be served with ice cream. Everyone agreed, and my daughter said, in the most ordinary way, "I'll go get some at the coop." The Berkshire Coop is a small version of Wholefoods and it's about five minutes' walk from my house, straight down the hill and across Main Street. She picked up her purse and [...]
I was doing a little weeding today and under the cauliflowers found a lot of reddish plants that I realized were young amaranth plants, small because they're shaded by the cauli leaves. I count on the amaranth to reseed itself every year. It grows to six feet and has strange dangling furry red flowers and looks quite weird and wonderful with the sunflowers (which also seed themselves). But when I saw all those small plants massed in the shade it struck me how much like Swiss chard they look. I [...]
Food has always been a central environmental concern, but there are some new issues arising. One is the growing conflict between fuel and food--or, one might say, between SUV drivers and the world's poor--and another is the mass marketing--or, perhaps, the industrialization, of organic food. It's a little hard to tell whether Michael Pollan thinks the latter is a good thing or a bad one, in "Mass Natural" in the New York Times: "This is good news indeed, for the American consumer and the American land. Or perhaps I should [...]