Really There (Really Here)

I exhale as I walk to pull a tomato from the vine in the backyard. That's the carbon footprint of this tomato. Well, maybe that's an overstatement. I hauled the soil to the yard with my truck, but still, that soil will be in these beds for many years so that impact will balance out over time. 

There's nothing like walking out back to pick your next meal. Looking closer to home to meet my needs is teaching me a lot. The smallest spaces contain the universe. The smallest yard shelters insects, birds, and beasts that we too often distance ourselves from. I've got, at best, about another 70 years on this earth. The soil here grew peaches and apples a century before I was born. The offspring of these groundhogs will probably be battling some well meaning gardener long after I'm gone.

This garden helps clarify that everything we're looking for out there isn't out there. Laying in the hammock in the tree in our side yard can feel like a hammock in Guatemala or Costa Rica. The relaxed mind that I had in those places wasn't a product of those places. The tomato isn't exclusively grown in Mexico, or spinach in California. And laying in a hammock in South Jersey with the sun filtering through a magnolia feels just as good as being under a palm in Panama, as long as you are really there.