OK, I admit it. I’ve been gone a while. I have received, what I guess you couldn’t really describe as ‘hate mail’ but neither was it ‘fan mail’, messages to the effect that I suck for disappearing. I apologize.
However, it has been an interesting month… I’ve dragged this book idea around… writing and deleting hundreds of pages (seriously)… quitting… restarting… even losing a hard-drive in the midst of all that… and coming to the conclusion that I’d just cast too wide a net. The good news is that I now have the beginnings of at least three separate books. The bad news is that I have the end of none.
Let us pause for a moment of silence for my garden, the biggest victim in all this. While it hasn’t quite reverted to the state in which I found it, it is a mess. I’m sorry garden. You were good to me, and I ignored you. I promise to clean you up, plant cover crops, and give you the love you deserve next spring.
OK, so, what does all this have to do with sweeteners? I’ll give you a hint: the average American eats 160 lbs. of sugar by most accounts. About 100 years ago (keeping in mind that they just released evidence of the oldest human remains from 4+ MILLION years ago), we ate 5 lbs. each. I would guess that it wasn’t too many centuries before that that we ate no added sugar. There probably wasn’t any aside from the occasional (and precious) honey, which I hesitate to add to the list because of the complexity of the stuff.
Just for the sake of trying to see the good among the rubble of my particularly challenging gardening year, I present the following series of photos of stuff that does not suck about my garden right now. Please enjoy, and if possible, go out and look for things that don’t suck in your [...]
Nearly anyone you ask will tell you: “Sow carrot seeds directly into the garden. You can’t transplant them.” Nearly anyone, but not everyone. For example, in John Jeavons’ book, How to Grow More Vegetables…, he encourages the reader to plant carrot seed indoors and transplant them outdoors some weeks later. He comments in [...]
I don’t have the heart to do the big pestilence post that I’d planned, so I’ll just say that if this weather does not shape up soon, I’m going to just jackhammer a hole into the floor of my greenhouse and plan on growing everything in there… under artificial lighting…
Today, I happened across an article about how to make aerated compost tea. You get a bucket, an air pump, some compost, water… blah blah blah, and pretty soon you’ve got this lovely bucket of disease-preventing, nutrient-rich foliar spray! That’s awesome, I thought! I’ll do that!
Recent Comments