[conspire] gardening

[Paul Zander]

A recent news item about Amazon planning to sell groceries made me 

stop and question who would want that?  Allow me to share some 

assorted thoughts.

Like Rick, I grew up with a family vegetable garden.  The photo album 

has pictures of gardens before the phrase “Victory Garden” was coined. 

Both of my grandmothers continued to garden as long as their health 

allowed them.  My grandson also knows the joys of fresh vegetables 

that he helped plant. 

When you know how good a fresh tomato or apple can taste, it is 

hard to be interested in the pretty, but tasteless produce sold 

in many stores.  Sorry Amazon, I have to go to the market and see 

and smell the produce before buying. 

I am fortunate to live between two small, but excellent produce 

vendors.  The Milk Pail at San Antonio and California and the 

“spin-off” Foothill Produce near Homestead and Foothill Expressway. 

The manager of each of those stores goes to the wholesale market 

early every morning and selects what is fresh and a 

good value that day.

Somewhere I read about “linear time” and “circular time”.  Silicon 

Valley runs on linear time: the schedule of prototyping, debugging and

releasing.  A garden runs on circular time as the seasons cycle and repeat.

Recently I met a man whose specialty was bee keeping.  He 

commented that a whole generation of people have grown up 

thinking that food just somehow appears in boxes at the store. 

Now the Millennials are re-discovering gardening and farmer’s 

markets under the heading of “sustainability.”