Garden

I used to work at Tower Books in Concord (or was it Walnut Creek? I think Concord) and that’s where I met my son’s Mother. Miles and I worked there together, along with Gabe Burke, Robin, Tony Talbert…lot of people! Matt Chese, Jody Mirvis – please add anyone I’m missing in comments-

But I worked with books for a few years when I was younger. When Robin and I moved up to Boulder Creek for Ash’s birth, one of the (hundreds if not thousands of) books I had was a Permaculture book by Bill Mollison I thought it was cool that you used chickens for a variety of things- that chicken drawing showing their manifold functions was one of my favorites. I suppose I could have started playing with the practices then but I did not.

I had gardening issues. Big ones.

One of these involves the giant strawberry patch in front of our house on Normandy Lane and the hundreds of snails therein. I did not like the snails. However, as when I was a small child I used to eat them, I got no traction with my professed disgust.

Retrospectively, I am not sure why I hated gardening. I had truly awful allergies when I was a kid, it was really hot, and I just didn’t like it. I never wanted a single thing to do with gardens.

When I was in Arizona I didn’t mind watering peoples’ gardens. I’d water the garden at Robins, I’d take care of David’s dogs and water his…but I remained skeptical. Part of it was just water-intensive practices in the High Desert…the rest I don’t know.

Last winter I started wanting to garden. I think this came about from changing my diet to a paleo-informed one. I won’t go deep into paleo here, but regardless of it’s evolutionary accuracy, it does really cool shit to your health and well being that can’t easily be discounted. In a nutshell I eat meat (pretty much anything ‘clean’- organic, free-range, grass fed- good as I can find & afford), a vast quantity of mostly green vegetables, some nuts & fruit. Really no bread, grains, potatoes, rice…though my cheats are the occasional burrito or Thai or Vietnamese dinner. So I think what happened was I stopped thinking of it as ‘gardening’ but ‘farming’.

If I had the room I’d have chickens at least. But the Meat Garden is just a pipe dream today...

To Be Continued....