Every day as we read our
newspapers, scan our internet forums, or click through the channels on our
television, we witness scenes of a decaying economy while being imprinted
with words such as: recession, bank failures, bail out, and collapse.
Everyone seems to be feeling the pinch. People are losing their life
savings, retirement funds, jobs, and faith. Occupations are being
threatened or are
going extinct due to cutbacks. Houses are sitting on the market for years
with no prospective buyers in sight, keeping people in limbo. Predictions
of future real estate crashes abound. We are all affected to a
lesser or greater degree with this seemingly bottomless pit of dire news
which continuously deflates our spirits.
Yet,
amidst the compost, something arises. After the long, cold winter, spring
does arrive. During a down time in the retail world,
seed companies are thriving with sales at a record high. Rattling packets
of vegetable and flower seeds are flying off the shelves at farm,
hardware, and department stores all over the country as the whole nation
is coming alive with the notion of tilling gardens. Community and
Learning Gardens are sprouting in almost every city, town, school, and
village.
Could
this frenzy of gardening be, in part, because of all of the publicized
food recalls during the past few years, causing us to want to know where
our produce is coming from? I canned a lot when I was younger. People
would, at times, ask me why and comment that it is cheaper to buy food at
the store. They were not taking into consideration that if you cultivate
and put up your own then you know what is in it. Rising food prices at
the grocery stores, combined with recent health scares, is causing growing
your own food to be 
economical
again. For those of us with homestead hearts, isn’t this what we have
always wanted? Imagine, a homegrown tomato, ripe and warmed by the sun,
having its day!
Gardens
are erupting everywhere and in places that we would least expect them.
For the first time since FDR’s Victory Garden there will be a plot at the
Whitehouse, and an organic one at that.
It will measure 1,100 square feet. What is the size of yours?
Maybe someday the size of our gardens will matter more than the size of
our bank accounts, our credit card limits, or anything else.
The part about the
Whitehouse garden that is really buzzing right now is the fact that it
will host two beehives.
Subscribers to Bee Culture: The
Magazine of American Beekeeping, received an e-mail in mid-March, with
an ecstatic alert from the editor: “As far as we can tell, there’s never
been a bee hive at the White House, so this first-ever apiary event is
something that beekeepers everywhere are excited about. The calls
and contacts received in our office once this broke exceeded any event in
the 23 years I’ve been here.” says
Kim Flottum, Editor, Bee Culture.
This
reminds me of how Victory Gardens were encouraged in backyards during
World War II, not just for growing food, but also to boost the morale.
It is obvious that our
spirits might need to be uplifted right now, people are having hard times,
things are changing and we are not sure what they are changing to. Time
seems to be going so fast that we feel suspended in jet lag. Yet, the rat
race has hit a brick wall. Kersplat!,
it has crashed, just like Humpty Dumpty, who fell and broke into a million
pieces. Try as they may and try as they might,
all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put Humpty together
again. Did our false Humpty need to fall? Perhaps now that the charade
is over it will become common for every family to have a garden and a bit
of livestock in their backyard to help supply their food.
“The
greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses.” ~Hanna
Rion
