I will be sore tomorrow. It won’t be because I biked or swam or ran a long way. In fact, the area I covered was sixteen feet square. This area is bound on all sides by boards and is filled with a mixture of peat, vermiculite, mushroom compost, and homemade compost. It’s what is known as a square foot garden.
I put this garden in a few years ago after reading Barbara Kingsolver’s book ” Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” in which she talks about the challenges and rewards of eating locally. Between that and Michael Pollan’s book, I was ready to grow my own food and bake my own bread. Both of those pursuits have waxed and waned over seasons and years.
It’s kinda hard not to get excited about gardening in late March though. Our apple tree – $8 at Ingles – came out to bloom and the green is starting to climb up the mountain sides. A gentle rain has been falling for somewhere near 45 days now, and there is grass growing in places I never thought we would see grass. So growing stuff will be easy, right? Ask me in June.