In her new book that details her ‘year of seasonal eating’, Barbara Kingsolver describes the time that it takes to grow asparagus. Then she says:“Gardeners are widely known and mocked for this sort of fanaticism. But other people fast or walk long pilgrimages to honor the spirit of what they believe makes our world whole and lovely.”
“If we gardeners can, in the same spirit, put our heels to the shovel, kneel before a trench holding tender roots, and then wait three years for an edible incarnation of the spring equinox, who’s to make the call between ridiculous and reverent!”
Source: Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L Hopp & Camille Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating (London: Faber & Faber, 2007), 29.
A review of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, is at Reviewing Books and Movies.
Image: The Kingsolver clan harvesting and weeding.