new day

It's a new day and time for a new post that isn't depressing and pathetic. Well my eye is better, for starters. Yesterday I cried so much that I broke a blood vessel or something. My right eye was extremely gross, looked like I had pinkeye. But today it's just bloodshot and maybe it will look normal by the weekend. Also I went back to St. Francis to settle up the bill and return the towels they had wrapped Lina in for her trip to the emergency vet hospital, and managed to get through the whole transaction without crying. Well, just a little. I also refilled Thirteen's antibiotics, which were about to run out. Now instead of giving her 3 small capsules twice a day, I have to give her 1 small one and 1 big one (still twice a day). Supposedly this will save us some money. The big pill is still small enough to fit inside a piece of cheese that she will gobble down in one go.

Okay, that was still pretty pathetic. Let me try again. Some seeds arrived in the mail yesterday and I think now I have everything. We're planning a decent sized vegetable garden. Not humongous, but ambitious considering this is our first year at it. We'll see if I can maintain enthusiasm and keep up with it during the summer months. My hope is that writing about it here will shame me into sticking with it, so I won't end up with a blighted row of dried up dead plants and weeds by August.

It's too early to start most seedlings, but I did start the sweet peas at the beginning of February, which are up and sprouting madly. They don't like hot weather and I read that you have to start them really early in NC, if you want any flowers before the heat kills them. They sound kind of high maintenance but I figured what the heck, I'll try them and see how it goes.

If anyone is interested in sharing seeds with us, let me know. We are going to have lots more seeds than we can use, especially summer squash, peppers and tomatoes. I would be interested in either splitting the cost of packets or trading seeds.

I didn't buy all the seeds through the mail; just a few things that I couldn't get locally. The big box stores have tons of seeds, but they're pretty much all the same basic things. Whole Foods also sells seeds, but not unusual varieties, just organic.

Which brings me to the question: what is the point of organic seeds? Does it matter for the plants whether they came from organic seeds or not? If you're not trying to grow organic, then it obviously doesn't matter at all. But even if you are, how much of the pesticides and fertilizers applied to a tomato plant would end up in its seeds? And then how much would end up in the fruit of the plant you grew from that seed?

Georg told me that for the bakehouse's legal requirements, the plants have to be organic for 3 generations before they can be sold as organic. That makes sense because the soil needs time to get rid of whatever toxins are in it. You wouldn't want to pump a field full of artificial pesticides in October, then start a new crop the next March and call it organic. But it seems to me that the origin of the seeds in my home garden is not such a big deal.

Before anyone says anything, yes I am aware that organic fertilizers and pesticides are also chemicals -- duh, everything in the physical world has a chemical composition. In fact I believe that produce sold as organic can be treated with organic pesticides that may be just as harsh as the synthetics. It probably depends on the individual farm, whether they are truly into organic principles or whether they douse their produce with pesticides that happen to be extracted from a plant rather than synthesized in a lab. But I'm thinking about my own garden, where I will try to avoid harsh chemicals if possible. But who knows, maybe I will end up with a vicious aphid infestation and say to hell with organics, give me a pesticide that works!