Toughsledding

POCATELLO — For breakfast I’m eating chopped egg mixed with Hellman’s mayonnaise on slices of buttered baguette. Delicious with my fair trade Paul Newman coffee.
I’ve had a bath, washed my hair, played “Misty” on the piano and discussed personal neuroses with a friend long-distance on the telephone.
Oh, and I did a Tarot reading that informed me I’ll have “success in all affairs” and “mix with interesting people.”
It’s a good morning. There’s no place I have to be, and I like it that way, not to mention that another fresh batch of snow and wind is whooshing in the trees around my house.
Today’s the day I’ll sort my garden seeds, and even though it’s still January, I’ll get trays and pots ready, replace the shelving in my southwest window and decide what plants I’ll start indoors.
I brought pots in from the garage a couple of weeks ago, but have yet to plant. I restrained myself in time, knowing I tend to “jump the gun” and end up with leggy plants that used up the nutrients in the potting soil and are less than desirable.
I’ll spend more time planning, drawing diagrams, making lists of what I need to do, when.
I’ve ordered Green Zebra tomato seeds. My daughter and son-in-law grew them last year and brought a salad to dinner one evening. I remember the tomatoes’ flavor — sweet and heavenly, like I remember tomatoes tasting when I was a kid, or like the “salades des tomates” I ate on a memorable trip to France.
Flavor, pleasure and health are the reasons we gardeners indulge ourselves, play in the dirt, coax plants to fruition.
In this high mountain climate, raising some vegetables and fruits is challenging. I often threaten to move further south, or at least to lower elevations where summer night-time temperatures are less ruthless.
But it appears that I am here for the “duration” as the saying goes. I own a house with a small garden space; I have a job I enjoy; I have family and good friends close by; hobbies to indulge in; good food; decent health for my age.
No king or queen could have more. There is no more. My house could be bigger, my faucets gold-plated, my clothes from Parisian couture, but once the status markings are stripped, the things and what they provide are the same.
True freedom is having a plot of land for growing food and flowers and/or raising a few necessary animals: chickens for meat and eggs; goats or cattle for meat, milk, cheese and butter.
The majority of humans the world over would agree that true wealth is a measure of self-sufficiency. An economy that takes land and food production out of the hands of ordinary people is greedy and unhealthy.
Measuring food crops only in terms of the exchange of money creates dependent and unhappy people.
As Americans, I suppose we’re becoming tired, jaded even, of doomsday warnings about the dangers of losing connection with the earth. But think about it, how displacement (hurricanes and civil strife) causes hunger and dependency; how deforestation and stripmining and other industrial activities pollute water supplies, poison (Chernobyl) and wash away food producing soils; how agribusiness in places like South America pushes independent native peoples off the land into dependent and disease-ridden economies.
Poverty and squalor are the equal and opposite reactions to greed, power mongering and gluttonous over-consumption — a simple law of nature.
Gardens can be beautiful, healthy environments, but they are also powerfully political.