The latest advertiser on Fox News' Glenn Beck Show....Survival Seed Bank, a company that sells non-hybrid vegetable seeds as 1) a food source for when the economic apocalypse takes us all down and 2) a commodity to barter with on those coming dark days. All yours for the low low price of $149 a jar! Yow.
As Stephen Colbert put it last night, "Glenn's advertisers know that nothing moves product like the hot stink of fear." So much for the Victory Garden ideal of growing our own food as a way to show our courage and faith in hard times. So much for growing food from a place of inspiration and hope.
Watch this clip to the end for Colbert's hilarious "crisis herb garden"--surrounded with electrified protective wire, of course. "Because I may be ready for a world in which the street run red with blood, and zombies rule the night and feast on human flesh, but I refuse to live in a world where I can't garnish." Sigh.
Rob and I spent the better part of the weekend obsessing about garden to-do list item #1: site the garden by tracking the sun across the yard.
We have a decent-sized yard (for this area....you might snicker at our 0.11 acres, but it's quadruple what we used to have!), but we're still kind of wedged among houses, trees--some better-pruned than others--and fences. So the question is, where do we put our vegetable garden so that it will get the requisite 6 hours of sun each day?
Our planning is complicated by our mini-orchard plans, because fruit trees also require full sun. We have 3 choices, really:
1. Put the vegetable garden in back, the orchard on the side yard into the front of the house. The side/front area gets fabulous, almost-all-day sun.
2. Put the vegetable garden in the side/front area, and put the trees in back.
3. Put 2 trees and the vegetable garden in the front, and put 2 trees in the back.
I really am hoping to be able to do #1, because I like some privacy for my veggies, and I think the fruit trees will look so beautiful filling out that side yard area. But it's all moot if the back spot I'm contemplating isn't sunny enough.
We took pictures throughout the day, from about 9 until after 5, and I made them into this charming (?) little 90-second movie for your viewing/suggesting/assessing pleasure.
Keeping in mind that we'll have "sprung forward" clock-wise, and that the sun will be higher in the sky (thanks, Meredith, for that reminder!), do you think the backyard will be sunny enough for my veg?
One last bit of info:the back left-hand corner of our yard (where the fence meets the hedge) is west.
Thoughts?
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