So much so, that I've taken on another one! I've decided that I want to grow fruit too. There's an empty plot next to ours but one row down. Digging has begun and weeding has commenced. And hopefully, by September we'll be in a position to mulch and feed and get ready for next Spring.
But I was a little (a lot!) taken aback tonight. I cooked a plate of produce straight off the lottie - steamed potatoes and curly kale and stir-fried courgettes with chili, and settled down and started to eat with relish. Someone asked me 'Wouldn't that be better with gravy on it?'
I am, literally, speechless. (Well, I'm not, as you're about to find out.)
This is what they said: "Wouldn't that be better with gravy on?"
Really? They were asking, in all seriousness, whether this organic, tended with love and patience, produce - no, not produce, but living plants, magical life - could ever be improved by the addition of a chemical, additive-laden, preservative-riddled, mass-produced, salty, sugary gloup?
I seriously don't know how to respond to that - other than to say - that, right there: THIS is what is the problem is. This is why so many people work at jobs they hate and get into debt to buy things they don't need to impress people they don't even know, much less like. Because when it comes down to it THIS is never good enough, is it?
Take something sublimely gorgeous and natural and add to it. Make a blue rose. Persuade a teenage girl that she'd look better if she fixed her teeth, wore make-up, dyed her hair, Mow the grass to make a lawn.
It's never enough, it would seem. We always want more. Bigger, better, brighter. And in the end it all comes down to one question:
Wouldn't that be better with gravy on?