welcome to the jungle

H.D. Thoreau, where would my life be without you? You are the most prominent among my personal pantheon.

I like the outdoors. I have a do-it-yourselfer streak. I like to cook. I like the smell of dirt, freshly tilled. The best night's sleep I ever had was after I spent a whole summer day bailing hay in order to bribe a farmer into showing me the whereabouts of a forgotten family burial ground.

Gardening is the answer to a life sentence of the slow fluorescent death in an indoor office. It's also a kind of a laboratory in the event that someday I decide not to make that particular compromise anymore.

So, step one, I contacted a local community garden to see about plot availabilities. It was May by then, but there was one 15' by 20' plot left. "It needs a little cleaning up," said the manager, in a clever understatement. "I'll take it," says I, enthusiastically, and sent off my $20 annual rent that afternoon.

The photo is of my garden plot as I first saw it in early May 2006. "I'll rototill it for $60," said the manager with a sly smile. Nope. Perhaps he didn't see that there was some asparagus somehow surviving in that mess. This needed a hands on approach. Anyway, I like physical labor right? Or at least I guess I really like asparagus.