A pumping thumping of intense activity seems to be bringing sister Spring into life kicking and screaming whether it is the magma and ash spewing into the Heavens down under the Southern Cross, the gates at the navel of the world that come crashing down to dust, or the fifth column of our Federalists, the National Guard, occupying the city of Lord Baltimore, events are broadcast and looming danger flying faster than YouTube uploads and defying description within the confines of 140 characters. And to this, it also stands that the ramps and wild onions and other early woodland eatables are pushing up out of mother ground, regardless of any other perennial cultureclusterfuck or terra forma tribulation. It is spring, indeed, and time to start planting. While salad is in season through petroleum magic year around, these are indeed the coming days of salad when up from lowly dirt springs a number of greens ranging from baleful provender to dainty sumptuous eatables upon with to drown in bits of bacon, deep fried croutons, or dressing made of 87.987% cheezwhiz.

It is perhaps important for those of us who eat greenery – and this blogger is late to the game having spend a good part of this particular life eating Fried, Deep Fried, and Blackened – to pay attention to our own gardening proclivities as of now a hobby but perhaps in the near future a necessity – similar to how Russians for hundreds of years maintained Datchas in order to grow some fresh produce . We are used to our newfound Foodiversity(tm) as bok choy and baby carrots are always in season. We need not fast for Lent nor have any hungry times where we ask gran to pop open another jar of pickled pumpkin seeds or preserved Paw Paw berries to push us through those hungry times of old whereupon our race in Old Tymes found ourselves thin as we starved alongside our brethren mammals in the wildes rather than chugging back French Toast Rollers and washing it down with Red Bull as we can do today. In these days we live in, the old rhyme and reason of the seasons has  been replaced. There are no longer seasons.  There is no longer a time we eat certain such-and-such because it is ripe on the vine.  There is neither a guarantee of safety and comfort from science, as our bagged lettuce and vacuum packed apples from Australia contain all manner of culinary chemtrails and fuzzy math. We must also look to the coming disaster that is California and the coming Salad Shortage War of 2016 or whenever they run dry and the upper middle-middle class/es must source their kale from elsewhere and for .003 centimes more.

This coming Salad War of 2016 may be averted.  The water issue may be solved by desalinization plants and all manner of technology of a thousand yearning Nerf Gun toting, coding, angel investor fucking start ups, unicorns, and nimble tech dickweeds that hammer away at keyboards looking to find a solution in an App and then monitize this for an IPO or buyout.  Our society continues to run farther and farther and deeper and deeper with the extension cord looking for a place to plug it all in….

A few years ago during my latest funemployment, I took to the rails and of that trip a memorable impression a’ la Motorcycle Diaries, was to see the Inland Empire, the vast Valleys of roughage and garnishes flowing in perfect rows arranged by machines and immigrants into an endless flowing panorama of green, light green, purple, red, the colours flew by and the train cranked and coughed into the setting sun. As far as I could see, produce. At the edge of this blessed Eden that funneled baby chick peas and tossed baby greens into a million salad bars and bento boxes the fields were guarded as it were by a rank and file Seraphim of oil wells, a thousand thousand angels, drilling away clanking and thudding away pumping out the precious juice we all upon currently, and must, suck. It smelled of progress and I pushed hard, although in the observation car my mind was addled by sulfates and wine, to still have memories of green.

Those now viscous dinosaurs were being sucked up, if that is indeed the origin story of oil, will have their 500 billion year in waiting revenge upon us making all life, not just ours, perhaps extinct as we tussle and fight over their precious extract. The fires burning off excess methane and xylene. Right… Next… To all that pristine salad. And so when I hear of the latest listeria outbreak in the arugula, the e colli in the broccoli, the syphilis in the kale, the plague of laughing fever in the Walmart summer greens and discount pig parts, I can only also wonder at the toxic waste flowing from oil country to salad country. And… This is why I’m learning gardening. And why you should too.

I have no tip nor tricks to offer, there are Apps, and online magazines, and mommy blogs, and Mother Earth News, and Poor Richards, and listicles aplenty to better advise the mechanics of gardening but to perhaps at this moment, as the earth heaves and spews and humanity murders one another at a rate slightly slower than our aptitude at species reproduction, that I must occupy this bully pulpit, this humble blog, and to disport from the worries of the world and to dig my hands into the ground and as best as I can plant away, organic fair trade non-GMO heirloom seed/lings and drag you, Dear Reader, along for the ride. Tend your gardens this year. In cut off milk containers, window boxes from the Lohomwedepotargets or in a plot of land you have set upon as your own, grow something, water it, forgive your roommate for not watering it while you’re gone….

The frost is almost done for zone whatever I live at. For whatever time I have this week, this summer, or the remainder to my life… It’s time to plant.