The six of us sat around the table eating post-Christmas pasta discussing the movie we had just seen; who we wanted to end up with Meryl's character, what we thought she should do with her life, and then my husband reminded us back to reality, "it's a movie". Yeah, it was a movie, but when you plop down in that plush seat, there's an agreement; you will suspend disbelief for two hours or so, long enough at least to be told a story. And if it's good, the disbelief doesn't end at the door.
But nobody's fooling me with that kitchen garden where Meryl bantered with Alec Baldwin while picking uniformly round, red, robust tomatoes. I'm a kitchen gardener from way back when and mine never looked that good on its best day. You see, everything was at its peak, standing at attention in perfect rows; chard, delphinium, cabbage and corn. A working kitchen garden is in continual progress, a hole in the line where a lettuce was harvested, a pepper plant just emerging as the season warms, the pea vines falling over themselves, wilted from their own weight; all at different stages of growth. And still I sighed aloud and let out an audible whimper of envy.
Having once helped to design and assemble a home and garden show display, I found it hard to do the disbelief thing. I knew each pretty vegetable had been grown in a greenhouse, coaxed in containers to impeccability, then transplanted, transported and tucked into a deep, dark crumbly mulch. Voila, instant garden.
When I started my kitchen garden, the neighbors thought it was a pet cemetery perhaps, a formal rose garden at most. When they saw it was a garden that produced food in the front yard, the opinions were mixed, fifty/fifty at best. Unlike the movie version, where everyone admires Meryl; so earthy, so romantic, I was just "the nutty woman on the corner".
My Kansas Kitchen Garden The Garden Buzz
Cabbages and garlic The Garden Buzz
Kitchen garden spring time The Garden Buzz
I guess I was just ahead of my time.
