Bornfamous

Herbs and sun tea at sunset

Okay, so I have a whopping nine plants in my little balcony garden: eight herbs and an aloe vera. That’s it. No tomatoes, no cukes, no peppers, none of the usual summer veggies most backyard/balcony gardeners have going strong by this time.

I got all excited about growing my own food, in large part due to the inspiring example of this woman, and then I froze. I thought that if I could read enough books, web sites and discussion list posts, something would click in my head and I would suddenly become an avid gardener.

Um, no. Didn’t happen.

I bought a few herbs, overwatered them, watched them falter, and panicked. I can’t do this, I thought. Plus, my back hurts and I have fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue and I hate sweating and sunshine, and this balcony gets way too hot in the summer and I don’t know what plants will survive, and I need to have blinds hanging over the balcony to shade the apartment so it doesn’t get so hot inside, but veggies need direct sunlight, and this is TOO MUCH WORK for a city girl mouse potato like me.

That was the bottom line, really: gardening is too much frigging work. Okay, put another way: I’m too frigging lazy.

But.

I know in my bones that I need to start learning how to grow my own food. Now. Here’s why:

Food preservation, and food production are keys to democracy. We accept that a politician who is dependent on the money special interests provides cannot be wholly independent in their thought, and know that no matter how much personal integrity they may have, their intentions are fundamentally corrupted by being beholden to others.

Well the same is equally true of individuals - as long as we depend on large corporations to meet our basic needs, we’ll never be able to judge them fairly or recreate our society. That is, we cannot simultaneously call for an end to multinational monoliths and also pay them to feed us.

Whether or not our economy tanks, and I believe it will in the next few years, we still, all of us, need to know that we can take care of ourselves as much as possible. Even if we only have a balcony to grow on.

Now, a lot of this problem can be solved simply by eating locally, buying from local farmers at the farmer’s market, which I’ve been doing. But I still want to be more independent. I do want to grow my own food, even though I’m afraid of all the work involved. And I have an inkling that it probably isn’t as much work as I’ve imagined it to be. I do tend to let my imagination get the better of me. [Note to self: remember that.]

It has recently occurred to me that San Diego’s lovely climate has four growing seasons. And since summer seems to be too hot on my balcony, I can grow things during the other three seasons, just the opposite of what gardeners do in cold climates. In fact, now would be a good time to start some late summer seeds.

So no more excuses. I’m going to screw up my courage, muster up some gumption, and plant some goddamn seeds, dammit. I mean it!