Wednesday, May 7, 2008




OK, so this is a blog about arts and crafts, right? Not quite. Crafts are all very well, but life does intervene and the restless artisan must tend to life sustaining endeavours, such as gardening. Artisans must eat and these days it costs a considerable amount to put food on the table. According to a Ha'aretz columnist, we earthlings are actually "eating oil."
That is, oil production has passed its peak; our demand for it has not. Consequently, oil rich countries can up the prices to unprecedented highs and we will continue to ask for more, more, more. Obviously this affects the cost of energy needed to produce and transport food and it makes a grocery shopping expedition very painful indeed.
What does a sensible artisan do in these circumstances? First, she invests in a rain barrel, a compost maker and repositions the cold frame. Then she enlists the help a friend who will dig the weedy patch that once the vegetable garden. She lavishes soil amendments on the tilled space and plants edible flowers, a row of snow peas, a four store bought tomato plants, and row Red Dragon carrots interspersed with radishes. She plants herbs in a half barrel, pak choi and kale in an old wheelbarrow, salad greens in capacious plastic pots. She she weeds the edges of the veggie garden, checking on the health of three gooseberry bushes, two raspberries, half a dozen Nanking cherries, an enormous quince tree. Miraculously the asparagus that had been repeatedly uprooted by an echo-terrorist of sorts, reappears in quantities large enough for a two quiche-like pies.
Encouraged, the restless artisan tucks seventy five strawberry plants into a raised bed among recently planted Purple Passion asparagus. She pots a Marseille fig tree, a Maypop passion fruit vine and banana tree and dreams of feasts to come. Oil, shmoil. This is good. This is very good.

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