When I go to work, I focus on my job, and that's pretty much it. Except for brief coffee room banter regarding someone's latest plumbing catastrophe or kid's soccer game, I barely know the personal lives of even people that I've worked with for years and years.
I tend to carry that same efficient attitude into my personal life. I'm not one for idle chit-chat or what-are-you-doing-I'm-watching-TV phone conversations. I rarely notice anything in my life that's not directly connected to my immediate task at hand, of which there is inevitably always is. My unspoken life motto has been "streamlined, functional, and practical" with little to no connection with the aesthetics or beauty of the world.
One interesting impact that the community garden has had upon my life is that it's made me more aware of gardens, yards, and plants. The other evening we went to our friend Alice Gebura's house for an evening of bridge. For all of these years that we've been periodically playing with Alice, our friend Margie Knickle, and their various bridge friends, and I'm ashamed to admit that I've not given much more than about 10 seconds of my time to observing and thinking about their yards. I realized the other evening what a spectacular gardener Alice was. Her yard is meticulously landscaped with flowering trees, shrubs, and raised vegetable gardens.
A couple of weeks ago we visited David and Pam Durrant's breathtaking Micheldever Farm
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| Donella at Micheldever Farm |
on East Bare Hill Road. The farm was complete with babbling brook, stone walls, chickens that lay blue-colored eggs, and peacocks. John, my mother, my niece Donella, and I stared at each other, dumfounded over the beauty that surrounded us. I craved to soak up the sights, smells, and sounds of that garden and somehow etch them permanently into my brain so that I would never forget how much more to life there is than computer printouts, bills, and all of the millions of other must-do's that fill my day.
This morning John's friend Bill Doe took us to his family's orchard, Doe Orchards, on Rt. 111. We saw rows and rows of pristine blueberry and raspberry bushes covered with nascient fruit, apple and peach trees, and thousands of Christmas trees. You could have a grand picnic right there in the orchard amongst the trees, the grass was so neatly mowed.
Our family has been discussing HR 875 Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 and trying to figure out just what its impact will have on these small farms and orchards. I find it ironic that just as I am realizing there's more to life than computer printouts and bills, the rest of the world may be taking on the motto of "streamlined, functional, and practical".
There are a number of recent bills out that threaten local farmers. These bills are intended to protect us from the recent E.Coli and Salmonella contaminations that have made their way onto supermarket shelves.