by Richard S. Kordesh
Under the grow light on a platform a few feet from my desk, romaine and butter head lettuce are extending their limbs upward. They look jaunty on this rainy, early March day in the Midwest. The first few heads will be ready for salads in about ten days. The rest will be help fill the table through March and into April.
Inspired by them this morning with the imminent end of winter, I snapped off a photo on my phone and sent it to my wife, who had just left for her office, and to my daughter.
“Beautiful,” Kathy (the daughter) responded. “Are these spinach?”
“No, romaine and butter head lettuce,” I answered, glowing more now because these little green vegetables had just brightened her day downtown, too.
“Yum,” was her reply.
Last week, I prepared a stir fry infused with the frozen spinach from last summer’s bounty. We’re now down to the pickles we preserved in August and September. With diligent planning for three phases of planting, at this time in February 2013 we’ll still be eating the spinach and beets from 2012.
Gardening in one’s own habitat isn’t difficult, technically, but it does take time to see the possibilities in all the micro-spaces where food can grow. The kids don’t really have to be taught formally that the home is also a living habitat. They come to assume that, as I put it the other night at dinner, “Tonight, you’re eating your yard!”
Guest blogger Richard S. Kordesh is the author of Restoring Power to Parents and Places and has worked professionally in the community development field for 35 years.
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