While foraging through my
backyard garden the other day for cucumbers, peppers and
hot-to-touch chilis, a slogan occurred to me: “Support Our Troops
– Plant a Garden.”
A garden would demonstrate
patriotism because each backyard Eden lessens our dependence upon
imported oil. Of course, by itself, imported oil isn’t bad,
but an addiction so intense that it drives us to violence is bad.
We’ve managed to keep our distance from other places of
zealotry, terror and shocking abuses of human rights. Oil in the
Middle East pushed us over the edge.
Gardening was as
distant from my life as Afghanistan until I bought a house seven
years ago. My newly acquired yard had bluegrass in the middle and a
jungle of weeds on the periphery. One year my neighbors gave me
sets of zucchini squash, which they also planted for me. All I had
to do was add water.
I got squash and then more squash.
One would be sufficient for my tastes. But the squash plants were
more attractive than the weeds they replaced, so the next year I
planted more squash, but also green beans and broccoli. These new
vegetables similarly kept the weeds at bay with unexpectedly
minimal work. I also discovered the immense satisfaction of
rustling dinner from my own backyard.
My briskly
expanding garden now includes green peppers, cucumbers and onions,
plus more zucchini than I have friends. Along the way I have also
learned that gardens offer stuff for the mind as well as the
palate. Every year I am learning what it takes to grow vegetables
– just how much sun, how much heat, and just exactly what
type of soil. Thankfully, raspberries don’t mind that a
previous inhabitant of the house used the backyard as a landfill.
Berries do just fine in soil laced with sheet rock.
As
well, I have been composting all the leaves from my maple tree,
plus the daily stream of grapefruit rinds, potato peelings and
coffee grounds. Like a miracle, the pile never gets bigger, and by
July of every year I have fresh nutrients.
Now, from
morning to my evening’s repast, all meals include something
from the garden. Even in March I am eating broccoli harvested last
July. It both tastes better and saves money. I am tempted to upend
my remaining bluegrass and make that soil start pulling its weight.
All of this occurs on a 35-foot lot amid a sprawling
metropolis of 2.4 million people. It makes me think that the only
excuse for the big lots you see across the arid West is the
opportunity for creating big gardens.
So, how does a
digging a garden make me patriotic? Recall that during World War
II, a battle of singular motive against fascism and
totalitarianism, recycling and gas rationing were matters of
patriotism. So was gardening. To ensure food for the far-flung
troops, people were encouraged to plant “victory gardens.”
What’s true today is that our country’s
agricultural bounty is underwritten by oil. Fertilizers
manufactured from petrochemicals explain our spectacularly yielding
crops. More magnificent yet is our sea-to-shining-sea
transportation system. I know of one case where broccoli plants are
started from seed in California in spring, replanted in Colorado
during summer, then harvested and shipped to Massachusetts to be
eaten. And the broccoli is organic.
The American harvest
starts in Venezuela, Mexico and the Middle East — the sources
of our oil. Without oil from abroad this stunning display of
agricultural mobility would be impossible. Extraction of U.S. oil
supplies peaked in 1970, and exploitation of the National Arctic
Wildlife Refuge would reverse this for only a season or two.
Moreover, many experts predict world oil production will peak,
perhaps this year, but assuredly during the next decade. When it
does, oil will become even more expensive, supplies less assured,
our addiction more desperate. Meanwhile, we’ve delayed
pushing alternative fuels and technologies so that they have a long
way to go to diminish our reliance on oil and gas, but gardens
— they’re here and now.
Those of us who have
been addicted to things in life (mine was nicotine) understand
doing bizarre things to quench our cravings. As a nation, we crave
oil and will do desperate things to satisfy it..
I
propose something more bizarre. Support Our Troops — keep
‘em home and become a gardener.
Allen
Best is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of
High Country News (hcn.org). He lives and writes
in the Denver area of Colorado.
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