Born Free.... Or at least set free pretty soon thereafter.

Milkweed in the 1st and Elm Garden

Resilience is a funny thing....  You learn that lesson in gardening and it shows up in the strangest of places.  Sometimes I feel that much of my adult life has been lived in survival mode - that I have had to be (exhaustively so...) resilient.  And, I don't really think of it as a pretty thing.  It feels from the inside just a brutal, dark, and lonely thing.  

Of course, most of your garden is set up for survival mode.  Even the way seeds are designed enables them to grow in the harshest of conditions.  But, in our garden it isn't just the plants that have a singular goal and the potential to have it tough....  We are a "Monarch Way-Station".  What that means is that we are officially a garden which contains what is needed for Monarch butterflies to set down, eat, and reproduce.  The biggest element of that is milkweed, which, as I understand it, is the ONLY thing Monarch butterflies eat.  Boring, but at least pretty!  So, at certain times a year, we gardeners are delighted to see a gorgeous little chysalis hanging from one of our plants or attached randomly to some garden decoration.  We always hope that means eventually we'll encounter a butterfly crawling across the garden stretching its bent wings before it can fly.  And one always hopes they make it to that place before the cats find them - the Monarch's version of survival mode.  Occasionally, however, we harvest the plant first and then see the chrysalis.  So, with fingers crossed, we hang the chrysalis in a safe place and hope...

   

It can be brutal business for these butterflies:  there are cats and heat and the aforementioned gardeners.  Including me. 

Last week I cut some celery from the garden and brought it home for lunch.  It wasn't until later that I realized on the underside of one of the huge celery leaves, there was a beautiful green chrysalis.  Like all of them, it had what appeared to be a gold thread woven through it - like some kind of delicate ancient talisman.  I felt terrible.  I placed it on the windowsill and committed to taking it to the garden the next day.  But, I've been sick the past few weeks and day after day I would forget to bring it with me or not have the energy to visit the garden.  After a week, I gave it up for dead and thought I'd spend some time just photographing it with the macro lense.  Maybe its little Monarch life would have been sacrificed, at least, for some art piece...

 

On Thursday, the most amazing thing happened.  My business associate was here for what was the first meeting of a new venture for me.  It was a little nerve wracking and a little exciting.  As we prepared for the meeting, I suddenly heard her exclaim, "You've got a butterfly on your floor!"  My little chrysalis had hatched!  I mean, right there on my windowsill.  She must have been in our world for a little bit of time because she had already pumped enough blood to her wings that they were flat and free of wrinkles.  I knew she wouldn't be ready to just fly out of our seventh floor window and I wasn't sure, but I thought she was probably hungry and needed some milkweed!  We looked at the clock and decided to make a run for it to the garden.  Held gently in a paper towel, we walk-ran with the Monarch hoping we could give her a chance at survival.  When we got to the garden, we placed her directly on some milkweed and wished her well in her life.  I hoped that her determination to survive would give her a life of delicious milkweed, sweet breezes, and her own chrysalis entombed offspring.  I hoped she was one of the ones that got to migrate and fly free.

A monarch from my garden in the past.  This one a male, notice the spot on his wings...

It made me think about where in my life my reward has happened for the survival mode I've been in... the people that have picked me up and placed me on my own version of milkweed...who fed me and nourished me with their love and companionship and made it just a little easier to face the challenges.  I thought of the cool breezes that have connected me to a higher power, the tasty food I've eaten and the beauty, health, and wealth (all kinds) which I am lucky enough to have around me.  I reflected on my own thought process about my life...  I don't know that I can change my fears around the lonely and challenging parts of my life.  I had worked hard over the past few years to be more accepting of where I am and to try to be satisfied with each day.  I had come to love a good portion of my life.  - the home portion.  That didn't mean my mind and soul didn't stray to what I had wished my life had been or could be, but I did love who I was with and where I was.  I found joy in it.   But, I admit that I have a tendency to let the survival mode get me down.  So, maybe I need to take a lesson from my butterfly friend...  Maybe I must savor the milkweed a little more intensely and be grateful that it is possible for a beautiful ending to the survival story.  That on the other side of it, you can be born free.

Organic Food is for Snobs

 

Yak Cheese and Yak Drink - Bhutan

Lately I've been reading a lot of articles and op-eds written by some folks who are actually and incredulously saying that organic vegetable and the slow food movement are the domain of the "politically correct" or rich snobs.  They mock Michelle Obama's organic garden as a political ploy. They call Chez Panisse owner, Alice Waters, a crackpot and accuse her of wasting money and time in the schools teaching children how to garden and call it "socialist" to make the children help prepare the fresh food they have grown and will eat family style with their peers for lunch.  

One man wrote, unbelievably, that the East Coast storms prove that the slow food movement, which for the non-initiated means eating only foods that are in season and locally grown as to get the most nutrition, flavor, and to avoid the calories/environmental impact of shipping strawberries from Chile in January, will starve a nation.  What? Our ancestors got along just fine as short as 50 years ago eating only what they could produce from their gardens or at least a local farmer's garden.  During the winter months, they ate what could grow in the cold temperatures and they spent some time in the summer and fall "putting up" what they'd need otherwise.  And 30 years ago after the invention of Spam and Jello, this same man was probably the one writing op-eds about how eating organic foods is for hippies.  So, first it was ridiculous and hippy-like and now it's only for rich snobs?  Help me, I'm confused.

Around this same time, I was going through negatives to scan for my photo website.  I noticed that even during my adventure trips, I take shots of food. And I marveled at the versions of farmer's markets I had photographed.  Only these aren't just one day a week events which also sell tamales and cut flowers.  This is how they eat.  This is how the average person in Bhutan or Tibet or Egypt shops and eats - locally grown food that is bought and prepared fresh. 

Market in Bhutan. Chiles and more chiles, the national food!

I've learned from growing just a little bit of my own food, that it makes you happy.  The doing makes you happy, the taste makes you happy, the satisfaction of knowing where you food was grown, how it was picked, and that it was prepared with nutrition intact simply makes you happy.  I mean look at this sweet girl from the market in Bhutan...

 

 Happy Bhutanese Market Girl

I know shopping at farmer's markets and preparing fresh food isn't always possible.  I know the world is busy and everything is more complicated than 50 years ago or maybe in Bhutan. I get it.  But, to mock the people who are striving to get EVERYONE  access to fresh, non-pesticide laden, reasonably priced food or to encourage the growing of our own seems, well, small. Small minded, small visioned, just small.  To not desire that inner city kids get to taste a freshly picked apple that could lead them to not ever want to settle for something that was picked four months earlier is just downright cruel.  SOME organic food IS expensive, but not all of it and not at every store.  You know which one I'm talking about (Yes, Whole Paycheck, I mean you).  And there are fixes for that, too, once you start working on a political and socio-economic scale.  

  

Various barks used for cooking - Bhutan  

So, while the gentleman who wrote the op-ed piece munches on his twinkies during the storm, I know that if the same storm hits out here, he need not worry about me:  I've been taking the fruits of the season:  citrus and pears and I have been canning.  If the big one hits (and my glass jars don't break), I can feast on blood orange marmalade and pear/ginger preserves.  I'll just need to find a spoon.