Hi Nichole,
God summer’s depressing.
So there I am, it’s winter, it’s freezing, nothing grows, nothing will grow, so I get to do nothing in the way of chores. “I can’t do the goddamn chores, it’s winter, shit!” I could say. And I would be right.
Then spring shows up, uninvited, and I begin to plan to prepare to peel myself off the sofa and go out and review my itinerary for the next six months. Trim all the old dead shit off the perennials, turn the soil in all the beds, go to Home Depot and buy peat, soil amendments, mulch, lots of new annuals, and new perennials. This year we (Kathy actually) are adding vegetables to the soothing recreational activity that is gardening. We have no room in the existing beds for vegetables so you know what that means, new beds. So we need all kinds of blocks and pecky cedar ties plus drip system stuff. The drip system section at Home Depot is the height and length of a rail road car. There’s the main tubing, quarter inch tubing at the end of which will be fitted one of at least seventy five different water emitting devices, there’s soaker tubing, plastic elbows, splicers, “T”s, plastic male ends, plastic female ends (not the kind purchased at Ernestos’ Adult Emporium), clips, caps, timers if you want, this shit goes on forever Jesus!
Kathy is explaining that I have no idea how expensive produce is at Safeway or even Costco and that we can save real money by growing our own vegetables.
“So that’s one pallet of garden block, one pallet of pecky cedar ties, a half a mile of main drip line, an amazing collection of plastic attachments, all these annuals and perennials, plus all these bags of various dirt and shit?” the check out girl asks without even a hint of “jeez this is a lot of stuff” inflection in her voice.
“Uh, yes,” I say with a note of doubt as I catch Kathy out of the corner of my eye browsing the hand trowel, gloves, and organic insecticides rack.
“That comes to nine hundred and seventy nine dollars and sixty nine cents.” the check out girl reports.
“I can put about a third of this on my Master Card hon,” I inform Kathy.
“It’s cool, I’m pretty sure I’ve got room for the rest on my cards.” Kathy says without a blink.
I remember last year Kathy giving a friend of ours a tour of the yard, “so over here we have the grasshopper food” as she pointed out the flower gardens “and back here we of course have the squirrel food” she was directing attention to our first vegetable garden.
The primary human technological advancement enabling the population to grow at a rate that has left cockroaches green with envy has been the development of chemically and genetically enhanced industrial agricultural practices and techniques. The ability to grow food without having to factor in massive losses due to disease and or pestilence has led to the emergence of huge multi-national agribusiness corporations who, in an effort to placate their stockholders, will do anything and everything to maximize profits. Going organic will not be considered among the viable approaches to this gathering of money and power. Organic gardening implemented on a local level by local farmers, though proven to sustain the viability of the soil and provide safer (as in non-carcinogenic) more flavorful food cannot compete in the general market place against the larger agribusiness corporations with their giant land holdings, chemical and genetic engineers, and global transportation networks. This is because organic disease and pest control is, at this stage of development anyway, wimpy and pathetic. By the way the same is true for flower gardening as well.
The other day we were sitting in our rear patio watching as a fog of heinous little bugs, known as thrips, rolled onto the property and commenced to suck the life out of the very yard itself. We applied an organic pesticide which we had been assured by the manufacturer would be effective against all sorts of garden pests. Immediately after application I noticed the thrips had actually grown larger and more robust as if we had sprayed thrip steroids instead of thrip poison on them. As instructed, if this remedy did not work we would have to remove all the rose buds from the yard. As in all yards, roses are the queen of the ball. Kathy wondered why everyone else’s roses look great while we just had to destroy ours to save them. I said, “Did you smell the petroleum distillate stench of chemical pesticides wafting up from their yards?”
“Oh ya, that.” she resigned herself.
So last night we sat in our front patio area at dusk watching the stunning southwestern sunset, surrounded in the withering death that is our flower garden and Kathy wined, “How come we never get to have a pretty yard? Shit! I think I’m just gonna get drunk. Fuck it!”
“Well, as you know, organic gardening is a gateway drug to alcoholism.” I reminded her.
Love dad
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