Reveries on a Raven's Wing

By June 20, exhortations on vegetable gardening arrive too late for a Southerner to flex his or her green thumb. As any seedling will tell you, it's too damn hot--not the proper situation for tender roots. Still, Slate makes a wise exhortation, reaffirming my own favorite truth that stewardship of one's yard is a matter of both economy and miracle.

One rule I had this year when I began to map out my garden was that an eggplant could be just as lovely as a coneflower, if not more so. Last summer I watched the delicate soft-yellow flowers of okra open in the morning and shyly retire as the sun rose (picture source: BanyanTree). How could I ever choose a plant again that didn't offer caloric sustenance as well as the aesthetic kind? From Constance Casey's article:

But the less obvious and often overlooked pleasure in edible gardening is that the stuff is beautiful. You don't need to add flowers. A young peapod is translucent. Look closely, and you'll see that what seems to be a plain green plant can have an intriguing dark-red stem. Before its gorgeous, shiny-skinned, edible product appears, an eggplant has leaves with purple veins and a lavender flower with a tasteful yellow center.

Despite poor timing, I also like this piece because it does cut through the mysticism of growing plants to get to the reality of hard work and expertise:

But, to be realistic, the people who can feed themselves and their families from their own vegetable plot and save money doing it are rare. These people are extraordinarily diligent and patient, and, what's more, they're possessed of gigantic freezers and a willingness to explore the mysteries of canning.

What do you do with overabundance of squash? That's not the only problem. It's very likely that your vegetables will neither look as good nor, with the exception of tomatoes, taste as good as the ones in the grocery store. I know that's sacrilege for the Foodies, Locavores, and their ilk. But I'll bet you that the people growing squash for the grocery store know a hell of lot more about growing squash than you do. They've allo got some first-rate soil, first-rate fertilizer, and first-rate methods of keeping caterpillars from grinding their crop into a pulpy mess. What do you have, well-meaning organic greenhorn, Michael Pollan and a couple articles from the New York Times?

This is not an admonishment against gardening. Rather, it's a small personal exhortation for the very earthly glory of it, the fruit of labor, accident, and compromise. Kids are nothing if not difficult. Go have some.