I'll Show You Eating Local

Flowers are lovely, what with their colors and scents; yet they are also in grave danger should they cross my path. I am a killer of flowers. It's not malicious, mind you, merely negligent. My poor mother, a great lover of all things floral, tries to help me with my black thumb by, you guessed it, bringing me flowers which, also guessing correctly, I promptly kill.

So what on earth could possibly account for the frank bounty of my small garden? It's that I can eat my garden. I have a vested interest in its health because it feeds me. And it has been feeding me quite well.

I started with some seedlings from seedsavers.org and I waited until May to nestle them in the dirt by our front door. And then I waited. And watered. And waited. And watered. My herbs I was less concerned with: herbs are weeds - they grow anywhere (not so interesting side note: I grew some black peppermint in a pot on my fire escape and really paid it little heed; so little, in fact, that when winter came, I didn't bother bringing the plant in - after all, it cost me like 3 bucks, I could buy another one come spring - after a winter during which it was snowed on and frozen, wouldn't you know it, the plant rose again come the warm weather). By the time we came back from Nicaragua, the plants had nearly outgrown their stakes. More, bigger stakes were purchased. Then the plants started flowering and then, about 2 weeks ago, there was fruit ready to be picked.

The most glorious fruit possible. Tiny Mexican midgets, blondkopfchen, black cherries, purple Cherokees, green zebras, stupices; all sweet, all scrumptious. My awe is disproportionate to the event in question given how long we humans have grown things, but I simply can't get over the fact that I have successfully not killed plants.

And last night, in an effort to pretend we're eating while not really eating, I made the following (I'll leave it to you to guess which item someone else was responsible for procuring, but mind you it was local too): broiled Spanish mackerel (too lazy to get out the grill) over oven roasted cherry tomatoes with a parsley and mint salsa verde.

We ate the things that came from our garden. The things I water and prune and worry over. And it tasted good and fresh and low-fat and all the things the locavores say it should taste like.

Next year I'm definitely branching out into more than tomatoes and herbs, but for now, for the next 6 or so weeks, I will be blissfully happy with just that.

Aside to Clay: thanks for the mention, but crap, I try to keep my own political ranting down to 3x a month or so.