Whoa, Nelly

I can get ahead of myself. Often this problem is a byproduct of reading too quickly. My husband expresses dismay when I accidentally allow him to observe the rate at which I consume literature. When she sees what's going on, my mother also complains. This is not my fault. I read as much as I could as a child - I remember the day when I realized I'd read every book I wanted to in our neighborhood library - and now I read fast. That's how it is. I don't really understand why other people find the need to object to this innocent characteristic, when I'm the one who is constantly running short of reading material.

Lately I've been reading Fresh Food from Small Spaces: The Square Inch Gardener's Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting by R. J. Ruppenthal. It's dynamite. It makes me want to skip through the catalogs like a Pollyanna in pigtails, filling my virtual shopping basket with Victorian Bell Cloches (Territorial Seed Company), Braising Green Seeds (Seeds of Change), self-watering containers (Gardener's Supply Company), trellises . . . how about a greenhouse? Maybe I should keep bees! Chickens! Mushroom logs!

Whoa, Nelly. I don't even like mushrooms.

Ruppenthal, who turns out to be a professor at Evergreen College, has a very friendly writing voice. He makes it all seem so possible. He delineates which plants grow under various light conditions and what to do after you've been growing stuff in a container for a year and it's time to plant again. Actual, concrete conceptions of how I could actually grow food here are starting to coalesce out of my brain-mist. The trick will be to focus on a few simple things I can add each year. This year, I'm thinking: rhubarb, kale, peas, beans. That's not too complicated, right?