Today I hit the farmer's market in the parking lot outside my building, which is just starting up for the summer. They had a fair selection of strawberries and early vegetables, and I picked up some potatoes and cherry tomatoes.
It's reassuring to see a renewed cultural acquaintance with the origins of food. In a sign of the lingering disconnect, the top story on Drudge today is this piece on Michelle Obama's appearance at a pea-picking photo op. The link tag, "Michelle's Miracle Grow", is intended, I suppose, to express skepticism about the possibility that the White House garden could have produced anything edible this quickly. Drudge is no fan of Obama, and I'm sure he'd love to sniff out another Lewinsky-sized cover-up. But all the crops (lettuces, snap peas) are early summer producers in the central Atlantic zone, and so the skepticism just reveals the naivety of Drudge (as a perhaps average American) in failing to realize that not all vegetables are harvested in the fall.
I think all the media swooning about how "beautiful" or "stylish" Michelle looks is a bit embarrassing, just as the fascination with Barack's photogenic mugshots reveals how easily the press (and the country) can be seduced by an attractive multiethnic face. But growing a garden takes a bit of work, and I can think of dozens of less worthy ways for a politician's wife to spend her time. I'm not naive enough to think she's actually out there pulling the weeds (she has people for that) but it seems like a far more positive approach toward improving nutrition and promoting sound ecology than a barrage of taxation and regulation.
