The pleasure of eating should be an extensive pleasure, not that of the mere gourmet. People who know the garden in which their vegetables have grown and know that the garden is healthy will remember the beauty of the growing plants, perhaps in the dewy first light of morning when gardens are at their best. Such a memory involves itself with the food and is one of the pleasures of eating.
--Wendell Berry The Art of Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
If you have not planted a garden or read any Wendell Berry. Stop and do both now. Start with the garden and reward your day's work with Berry. Our first garden was much too large and much too ignorantly tackled but I loved it all the same. Our second garden was much too small to feed our family of three at the time but I loved it all the same. Our current garden has grown to be several times larger than that first one and our family has grown even quicker. While our garden struggles to keep pace, it has grown larger only because we planted and lost and planted and ate and we continued to plant. We tend gardens and we tend children around this little half acre because we love them both. Our garden is my favorite place. A cup of coffee and the early morning light filtered through the 100+ year old oak trees onto the work of our hands. You cannot imagine such peace until you have planted and lost and planted and eaten and continue to plant.
