EcoBliss: As Local as You Can Get

Baby grapes in our own back yard!

Listening to: Marchio Bossa singing about Montmartre.

Today's Bliss Formula: Riding my bike to the library to work in children's, which is pleasantly busy this time of year. I love working in a space from which I can see the lake; at lunch, I will go outside and sit at water's edge.

As you know, we've been eating strawberries for some time now out of our back yard. And they just keep coming...These particular strawberries are an heirloom variety, making them extra hardy and disease resistant.

We are also growing an heirloom, hardy kiwi out front. Yes, a kiwi along the Great Lakes. When they are ready to eat, they will be the size of grapes and we'll eat the skin. We've been told they taste like kiwis times ten. Here's a picture of one taken today:


And the grapes at the top of this post are Cabernet Franc, which make a red that is the "father" of Cabernet Sauvignon. With only two vines, we should eventually have a yield that will easily make 30 bottles of wine. With only two more vines... ahh... dreams of bottles stacked up in the basement. From our wine making last summer:


Growing ultra-local food -- otherwise known as food from your own yard -- does not take a lot of space. We only have a small city plot, which is, I think, one-tenth of an acre.

All the greens you could eat can easily be grown in pots. You can also grow tomatoes and strawberries and blueberries in pots. There are some miniature fruit trees that can be pot grown. This is one of my favorite tree and heirloom sites.

Growing food is a relatively new thing to me. I've always been a big flower gardener and so food growing can feel a little perplexing. But mostly it's about sun and water and weeding.

Eventually, we want to rip out our front yard, surround it with English cottage garden flowers, and then grow food in the center -- since that is where our best sun is.

For now, the back yard is a decent food producer.

Growing food for yourself teaches you about seasons. As a city girl, I had no idea what fruit was available when. It was always in the grocery store!

Growing food for yourself teaches you about the delicate balance it takes to feed yourself. The sun and the rain are so easily the "enemy." A little too much rain and the tomatoes are awful but not enough rain and things just don't grow.

When I am "cheating" and watering with my garden hose, I think of the farmer who doesn't have that option.

Growing your own food also, I think, makes you a better cook. I take more time with our foods when we've grown them; I think of ways to eat them that emphasize their individual tastes.

Growing your own food brings home the organic issue once and for all. When you pick that lettuce from your non-poisoned bed, you're thankful for how clean it already is. I love that I can pick a strawberry from our yard and pop it right into my mouth.

And remember, as I've said before, the flowers are still just as important -- they attract the bees and the butterflies and the birds, all necessary to a healthy garden and a healthy planet.