This year, we decided to grow cherry tomatoes and herbs in the garden. We (by which I mean Stephen) started in February with seeds and grow-lights, and now we're seeing the results. It's miraculous to consider the very obvious fact that plants -- using nothing but what they can receive by way of air, soil, and water -- are able to grow and produce edible fruit, but at the same time, it's daunting to remember how difficult it would be, as individuals, to grow the food we need to eat, assuming -- in our case -- we need more than a handful of cherry tomatoes and some basil and thyme. More complicated I think is the difficulty most Americans not directly involved have in acknowledging that we've turned over most of our food production to an environmentally punishing industrial complex that exploits animals and workers in unimaginable ways to get our food to us. Is growing cherry tomatoes a small step toward a larger revolution? Probably not, but maybe it's something to ask the question.
Zephyr and Clio, who have not seen a significant change in their lives since the easing of lockdown restrictions, seem fascinated by any change in the garden.
We decided to grow catnip because Zephyr kept munching plants at random (as far as we could tell) throughout the entire garden, treating it like a big salad, which did not sit well with his stomach.
As per the name, he likes to take little bites -- or nips -- of the leaves, but there is often a line.
The order is always Elektra, Clio, and then Zephyr. (Girls before boys.)
Here's Clio enjoying some catnip with the stoner-filter applied.
The other garden news this summer is that a bluejay moved in. Sometimes he squawks at me because he wants privacy while he takes a bath in our fountain. I try to accommodate the request, because for many years, we only had pigeons and sparrows, so the bluejay represents biodiversity in this corner of the world. I like to think that maybe this bluejay represents another symbolic step toward repairing something that is broken.
I'm less confident that -- in most ways -- getting back to "normal" feels like such a step.
The flight path has been resurrected, which means we can once again look up and wonder where everyone is going.
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