Confession: I do not have a green thumb. I would like one but the truth is I'm lucky to keep a few house plants (barely) alive. I just don't have the instinct for it like I have the instinct for how to roast a chicken or bake a layer cake. Somehow, when I pick up a knife or a wooden spoon, I know what to do. Without hardly thinking, I understand that a particular recipe would taste better if the onions are browned a little instead of sweated. Or that fresh basil, finely chopped, would be an interesting garnish on a fresh peach tart.
Weekend Meditation: Some People Grow Things
Over the years I have come to accept my lack of gardening skills just as I've come to accept the fact that I'm tone deaf and can't seen to pick up a second language. Even better, I've come to appreciate these talents in my community of friends. In my mind, we're like a crazy quilt or maybe a masala, each one contributing what they can and creating something beyond any individual effort: a greater whole.
The Slow Food movement has suggested that we replace the word 'consumer' with 'co-producer' as a way to recognize and support a less passive relationship with our food and how it is produced. When we do this, a deep alliance is revealed and a more complex and ultimately rewarding relationship is formed. One in which our dependancy is acknowledged and growers and eaters take our places beside each other in the long, noble effort to put food on the table and carry on with the business of staying alive.
The lesson for me here is that we don't live in isolation or only with the things that we choose or are comfortable with. Life is much fiercer than any nest we try to build. We can fight against this, or we can roll up our sleeves and participate in it, and celebrate it and enjoy it.
So this post is in praise of gardeners and farmers on whose instinct and knowledge and tenacity my very life depends. Thank you for your steady, patient effort as you tend to growing the things that end up on my plate or fill my house with beauty and color and fragrance. Thank you for your backbreaking work, and your daily crapshoot with the weather, insects and a fickle marketplace.
This post is also dedicated in gratitude to my father who would have been 80 today: a passionate grower of peonies and tomatoes, and a dedicated bread baker, pickler and applesauce canner. Each day of my life reveals more of what you taught me.
(Images: Dana Velden)
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Weekend Meditation, gardening, farmers, Slow Food, interdependentRelated Links
- Weekend Meditation: Harvest
- Weekend Meditation: A Memorable Day
- Weekend Meditation and Consciousness Raising: It's Up to You and Me
- Weekend Inspiration: What's Your 'Before I Die' List?
culinarily speaking, of course - A Brief Post from Slow Food Nation
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I know it's off-topic, but I love that plate that you featured in the photograph. It's obviously vintage, but do you happen to know who made it, or how I could go about looking for one? Thanks!
view TableForOne's profile
I can't even keep houseplants alive, Dana; I'm right there with you on the gardening. I'm lucky--my partner may not know which end of a knife to pick up, but she can grow vegetables like nobody's business. And I'm thankful for it.
view sjbreeze's profile
I love how talented my friends are, and how willing they are to share those talents. It's so amazing when you realize that a life shared is just so much easier to live.
view Daigan's profile
Raising my hand as another brown-thumbed person. Which, I think, makes me appreciate my CSA even more.
view EmmieB's profile
TableForOne:
The 'plate' is actually a round print mounted in a round frame. It's by a Milwaukee artist named Joanna Poehlmann and I believe she sent it out as a holiday card (?). The print is signed by her with the date 1966. She gave it to me about 15 years ago but I've lost track of her since.
I believe she just had a show at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Maybe they have her contact information.
DV
view Dana V's profile
Another brown-thumbed cook here, and from a family that has a green-thumb gene a mile wide. Grandparents could grow ANYTHING, one grandma had pots and pots of ever-blooming African violets and never knew "what the big deal is" about how hard it is to grow them. Well. I got the cooking gene, and the gene for picking up foreign languages, and these have served me so well I'm not going to miss the green thumb gene much. I plan to conduct my annual ritual of starting an herb garden on my windowsill anyway, but this year when it dies I'll be cheerful about chucking it in the trash. The "garden" is for my daughter. Hey, maybe the gene skipped a generation!
view cmcinnyc's profile
Those of us who do grow things appreciate those of you who have brown thumbs come zucchini season. :)
view bocadelperro's profile
bocadelperro,
LOLOLOL! Thanks for that laugh-which really was out loud!
P.S. Dana, thank you, too. : )
view Farmgirl Susan's profile
Thanks, Dana!
view TableForOne's profile