Greenblade - creation - faith - justice

Growing and Greens

This morning I headed out to the garden with my favorite kitchen shears in hand to harvest some greens. Last week I harvested piles of Tuscan kale, rainbow chard, and purple kale. Today, it was collard greens and purple kale. The dew was still glistening (or was that leftover drops from last night's watering that hadn't evaporated yet?) on the large green leaves. You could hardly tell that I had been out there selectively cutting off leaves the week before, already there are large chard and Tuscan kale leaves that I will have to harvest later this week. While keeping half an eye on my wandering toddler outside the garden, I snipped at the collards and made my piles. After weigh-in, I noted that I had about 2.5 pounds of each green. Not bad, coming from 6 plants each.

All of my greens except for the turnip greens and broccoli rabe came from the greenhouse of a ... MORE

On Food and Faith: Sabbaths and Spears

Barbara Kingsolver's latest book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, chronicles her family's efforts to eat locally for a year. In typically sensuous, lyrical prose, Kingsolver gently and not so gently nudges us to reflect on what is being plopped on our plates at each meal, specifically considering how far most of our food travels to get to our mouths and how much energy is consumed in the process for field to table. I can't help but nod my head and read passages aloud to whoever will listen as Kingsolver, her husband Steven Hopp and daughter Camille Kingsolver, complement each other's reflections with statistics and menus. Check out the book's website.

What a perfect time of year to be reading this book! As I helped a friend transplant the first of her brassica starts from the greenhouse to the garden, we munched on tender asparagus spears starting to peek from their bed. That afternoon, I bought my first pound ... MORE

New life and sprouts

Yesterday at our Easter Eucharist, we sang our theme song - Noel Nouvelet - Now the Greenblade Riseth. Susan posted her own musings on this hymn just a few days ago. This got me to thinking about my own obsession with green blades. While a week ago, the warm weather here in Ithaca inspired me to start cleaning out the potting shed and rake up some forgotten leaves from last Fall, the snow on Easter morning (and the days before and after) has quelled some of our vernal enthusiasm. And while I love watching my daffodils and perennials make their way through the apparently dead earth with their shoots of green, it is the garden that holds my true passion. Turning the soil, preparing the beds, nurturing the seedlings, transplanting into neat rows, watering, watching, waiting, eating. Connecting with the Earth in a true visceral manner, marveling at the wonders of creation. I'll have to wait a little while longer ... MORE