Tuesday of Trials and Tribulations

Nice pink petunia above ('Vista Bubblegum') from last year. We'll be using lots of pink this year! As I type, Dr. Gredler and Bill are going thru seeds and writing color-coded nursery labels for each packet depending on the collection in which they will be grouped. This process is very laborious but worthwhile. For instance, seeds of the petunia above will be coded with pink labels so we can pull all flats for our "pink collection" as they arrive as small plants (usually showing no color at that point anyway). The frustrations include keeping seeds organized but also dealing with backorders and "crop failures" (need to be reordered). The guys are doing a nice job despite some minor setbacks. We're also bagging up small packs of heirloom runner bean and pole bean seeds as they arrive. Our carpentry grumpies are building some neat, custom vining structures for these climbers and we wanted to offer seeds of these beans at our plant sale alongside the plant "starts" of the other veggies and basil. Maury, Dick H, Dick P., Gary and Jerry all helped out today as well. Larry continues to organize "post holiday lights show" processing and storage.

I was reading about the "100 Mile Diet" that encourages eating locally grown food and focusing on patronizing local growers. It's an interesting (albeit sometimes difficult) process that while not necessarily convenient, has many benefits. See http://100milediet.org/why-eat-local for some interesting benefits. This concept goes hand in hand with my word for the week. Locavore was developed three years ago in San Francisco (already in the Oxford Dictionary!) and refers to those that eat local food. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_food for the official definition and perhaps be inspired to try more of this in 2009. The benefits to you and the environment are myriad, pronounced and hopefully inspire a contagious reaction!