Morgan notes a curious imbalance in the touted lifestyle of Potus and Flotus:
Not that I mean to insult vegetable gardeners, but it seems to me an imbalanced lifestyle has been embraced, one devoted to the lifestyle of a vegetable garden who possess vast holdings of land, but is obsessed only with that one damn garden. Pull the weeds, spray the weeds, fertilize the vegetables, plant the vegetables, harvest the vegetables…from the moment the gardener rises in the morning, until he puts his weary head down for the night. Just stay fixated on image, image, image the way the gardener remains fixated on the garden.Hasn't he noticed that Miracles Grow in Mrs. Obama's Neighborhood: And All the Good Little Children Say "Yes"? Posted by Vanderleun at September 19, 2009 12:00 PMElsewhere, there are bridges that need mending…and fences too. There are taxes to be paid on owning the land. There is a house to be painted with a roof that needs patching. Babies with dirty wet butts that need changing. Meals to be cooked, and after that’s done, dishes to be washed and ovens to be cleaned. And on the far corner of the property a pack of wild coyotes is making inroads, doing their scavenging and fornicating and pooping and yelling. As they get bolder, they’re going to start carrying off things like kittens and puppies, then work their way up the babies.
There’s shit to be taken care off. All over that spread.But no. Nothing matters except the vegetable garden of public image. -- House of Eratosthenes
Didn't I just read somewhere that The WH vegetable garden cannot be eaten from due to high lead levels in the soil? IIRC during the Clinton era the lawn was fertilized with sewage sludge or something (how apropos)contaminated with lead.
Posted by: teresa at September 19, 2009 3:02 PMLead in the soil making the veggies inedible is a rumor that has been widely debunked. Yes, there is lead in the soil but nothing toxic.
Posted by: vanderleun at September 19, 2009 3:07 PMLink:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/garden/13lead.html?_r=1
Posted by: vanderleun at September 19, 2009 3:09 PMThank you for clearing that up for me.
I knew I had read something about it, but wasn't aware it had been debunked(by the Times, no less).
Now, why did she need to go to the Farmers market, with all those fresh garden veggies right outside her door?
Up here, we eat kale clear into mid winter. Not Tuscan kale, of course.
Posted by: teresa at September 19, 2009 4:04 PMWhen I think of vegetable gardens, I think of my dad's. He got up at five each morning, went to work by six-thirty so he could be off by four, and then tended the garden. Six-foot tomato plants (Sacramento— you remember!) and bell peppers that lasted for months. We'd have salad all summer long and liked it— not even because we had to, but because it was good.
I'm the youngest of five kids. The vegetable garden is how my parents survived our teenaged years without being eaten out of house and home.
I'm planning my garden. It will probably be years before I get it right. What I'm really hoping to be able to do is to co-opt one of the sprinkler heads and turn it into a faucet so I can set up drip irrigation on a timed system, because that's one thing that's saved my dad so much time in the last several years. (You can get little battery-operated faucet timers, too— my parents can go on vacation and have the garden watered perfectly in their absence.)
Posted by: B. Durbin at September 19, 2009 8:37 PMThe White House garden soil contains toxins? And the Obama's cannot get the EPA to put together a remediation plan?
How silly.
And she could just use a series of planter boxes ntil that is done.
Somewhat on topic: The Dearborn Inn has an herb garden. I have actually seen the kitchen staff collecting various herbs.
Posted by: Mikey NTH at September 20, 2009 10:38 AM
HOME