August 15, 2008, 6:19 pm
Filed under: conservative, gardening, humor, links, southern

Carl Wayne’s Weekly Columns and Newsletter August 15, 2008

Welcome to the 51th issue of this usually weekly newsletter. Subscribers: 113

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Memphis Area Master Gardeners website and newsletter

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Civilian Fitness BOOT CAMP! For more details and 2 free workouts, Call Sergeant Les (901) 592-7097

This week:

From the Collierville Victory Garden:

Year-to-date 969.2 + 102 Monday + 78.2 today new YTD total 1149.4 lbs!!!

WE’RE OVER A THOUSAND POUNDS. ONE MORE THOUSAND TO GO!!!

These birds are flying all around town eating dragonflies per John Walko:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Kite

Our precious granddarlings are back in school. It’s good to see them happy and busy. Soccer and baseball practice are in full swing and roller hockey registration is next week.

I don’t understand the problem with Russia & Georgia. Just get BHO to call Putin and tell him to quit it, or call the UN and tell them to handle it. That’s how he says he’s going to do it when he gets in office.

A friend posted a much appreciated VOTE FOR CARL note online:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FedExLegends/message/377

Corey is number 5 in these team videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5BLp4bPtVg

Mimi and I will be at the Bodock Festival next weekend in Pontotoc MS. Come by our Bodock Post booth on the square on the Post Office lawn.

Column / Short Story:

Tainted Tomatoes June 17, 2008

“We are usually hit not in the side of the head, but squarely between our eyes.”

~ anonymous

What? No tomatoes on my hamburger? No salsa made from tomatoes? No BLT? What is the world coming to?

You can’t buy a tomato in our town. News channels reported just yesterday a new case of poisoning of a poor unsuspecting soul by salmonella bacteria after eating a tainted tomato.

Apparently even a generous dose of salt or thick slathering of Hellman’s mayonnaise will not kill that potent a bacterium.

We’ll all have to wait, and except for we backyard gardeners, have to do without our favorite veggie, actually a fruit: a berry. We should have seen it coming.

One can hardly imagine the scope being the same as the Asian bird flu where millions of chickens have been killed and disposed of, mostly just to be safe.

And worse, one can imagine the unthinkable. Terrorists may have found a way to poison Americans or at least scare the heebie jeebies out of us.

Well, I better stick with what I know something about and can do something about which is tomatoes. I raise fifteen varieties of mostly old timey heirloom tomatoes in my backyard. Me and Mimi and our granddarlings will not have to suffer for lack of tomatoes.

We as a society need not have this problem either. We choose to eat food produced who knows where by who knows whom and transported thousands of miles to our stores. My how convenient. But how dangerous!

To paraphrase a famous quote: Imagine whirled peas, in a local farmers market. We could buy locally grown produce from known sources. You can know the farmer who grew the fresh produce that will be on your table tonight.

It will be so fresh and at its peak of flavor that children will be tempted to partake and discover they actually like veggies. And raw is better. You can thinly slice a bowl of most veggies and serve chilled along with ranch style dressing or my favorite: bleu cheese.

Locally grown produce will also be in season, will be multiple varieties of each kind of veggie, and will be nutritious heirloom varieties instead of anemic hybrids. It will have ripened naturally instead of being picked green and shipped for days, and in the case of tomatoes, turned red (not ripened) by being gassed with ethylene.

The market will have not only local farmers but ordinary backyard gardeners like me who come to sell and swap and chat and renew the old time sense of community.

While we have no such market in my town, the age old concept is coming back and spreading widely across America. The concepts of eating local and living sustainably are catching on. It’s a matter of health and nutrition and national security. We must do it.

Ain’t God good!

Carl Wayne Hardeman, Master Gardener

mymaters@yahoo.com

An OLD column/newsletter:

A Midsummer Stroll In the Sun at the WTC Aug. 14, 2007

“Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.”

~Noel Coward & Joe Coker

Maybe because I was born and raised in the hot humid South, I am supposed to say something like “heat don’t bother me” when asked why I am out in today’s 100 degree noon sun . A record high 106 is forecast for Memphis, but we are twenty-two miles in the hinterlands and in a smaller heat island. It was 73 on my patio this morning when the Memphis airport registered 77 degrees.

But today it is not too humid, a light breeze is blowing, and I’m feeling guilty about that Almond Joy I ate to chase the hot plate lunch from the cafeteria. I had been so good at breakfast and ate the fruit and cereal Mimi had for me.

There was a small crowd and an unusually low average IQ at the Table of Knowledge in the cafeteria today, basically just me. So I had time to spare to walk back to building 80 after circumnavigating the lake.

Exiting building 50 to the north I saw a skink. Since they are carnivores like me, there must be enough bugs and worms nearby for them to eat. I imagine it lives in the English ivy, which covers the wall under the windows on the southeast corner of building 20.

One wonders if we could be more colorful and name the buildings. If this were Colorado, the buildings would be named for mountains. I suggest bird names, and may start calling building 80 Kingbird.

It is very dry, but most of the WTC is irrigated. I saw very little wildlife. Besides the skink, I only saw a few dabbling ducks, a cardinal, a juvenile robin with its yellowish breast, an eastern kingbird, a sulphur butterfly, a painted lady butterfly, and a swallowtail butterfly. Wikipedia says dabbling ducks are “…so named because its members feed mainly on vegetable matter by upending on the water surface…”

The lake level is so low the irises are above the water line. I imagine the catfish have ticks on them.

The morningglories are doing well on the bamboo trellis over “the rock.” They could use a drink of water today.

The great swards of monoculture grass are closely cropped. The creek banks in the southeast corner are chemically scoured and eroding badly. One wishes for pleasant meadows and creek banks and biodiversity and more of Nature’s beauty to enjoy.

The fields behind Kingbird (building 50) have been cleared for the extension of Shea Road and the future Porter Farms subdivision. We may never again see the small herd of deer grazing there. But they cleared the land to build my house, so I cannot complain.

On a different subject the sun and rain and soil have yielded a beautiful bountiful harvest in our volunteer garden on South Rowlett next to the railroad tracks in Collierville. We volunteers have raised and donated 1,723 pounds of fresh produce to the Food Pantry and the Page-Robbins Alzheimer’s Adult Day Care Center.

The people who patronize the Food Pantry seldom get fresh produce, and the Food Pantry had never had any to give away before. A lady at the Food Pantry told us about a client who was given one of our watermelons. He broke it open, sat down on a bench, and ate half of it right there. That’s what keeps us going!

We harvest twice a week. The biggest harvest is Thursday mornings when we take it to the Food Pantry. On Monday mornings we take it to Page-Robbins. They take the peas and beans and spread them out on a table. One by one the people who had been sitting alone drift over to the table and begin shelling and snapping and talking.

Herbie Krisle of Page-Robbins says:

“Though none of our clients are physically hungry, they are hungry to be productive and active. And that is where this fresh produce has come in. We have enjoyed shucking corn, cutting it off with plastic knives; shelling peas and snapping beans; making homemade salsa. All while talking and reminiscing about days gone by.” This, too, keeps us going.

We have begun our fall garden, and soon will have more okra, squash, cucumbers, eggplants, tomatoes, and crowder peas. Next we will start greens and cabbages and turnips and rutabagas.

Fresh produce essentially comes from the sun as plants use photosynthesis, water, and soil nutrients to produce sugar to grow the produce. So who am I to complain about the sun?

Carl Wayne Hardeman

rowsofbuttercups@yahoo.com