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xchrom

(108,903 posts)
Tue Apr 23, 2013, 07:15 AM Apr 2013

Earth Day Lessons From a 'Backyard Jungle'{long, thoroughly enjoyable read}

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/earth-day-lessons-from-a-backyard-jungle/275166/



A grey squirrel eats a nut in St James Park in London. Squirrels. Grey squirrels made short work of James Barilla's peaches. (Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP)



***gardeners are made of sterner stuff than one might think

In my estimation, the Chilean peach has made great strides in recent years. Most of the time, it no longer tastes like a ball of sawdust soaked in corn syrup; it actually tastes a bit like a peach. Actual juice may in fact emerge from a bite; actual tree-ripened hues may be detected on the surface. It's not terrible, not for early February, when most of us are looking at a foot of snow on the ground and praying Punxsutawny Phil or whatever they're calling this year's groundhog isn't going to see his shadow.

But no matter what the little sticker says on the fruit flown in from the Southern Hemisphere, whatever you're getting in the supermarket in the middle of winter isn't really a peach. If you've had the pleasure of an encounter with an actual peach, one left on the tree until the Brix measurement of its sweetness is off the charts and a single bite makes the whole thing melt like ice cream toward your elbow, you know what a real peach is. You also know that finding such a fruit isn't easy. Taste and travel are for the most part mutually exclusive in the world of fresh produce, and peaches are probably the least amenable to making the trip to market. A peach purchased at the grocery store, it's safe to say, is usually a disappointment.

Imagine, on the other hand, that those delicate fruits never sit in a packing warehouse or the cargo hold of a jet, never get jostled in a crate in a pickup bed, never get crushed in a heap at the supermarket. Imagine if you, the farmer, walked out one fine warm morning to find that perfect peach for your breakfast--right there on your own tree. How simple, how rapturously flavorful, how carbon-friendly that piece of fruit would be. Take one for you, and one each for your little ones, too. After all, the commercial peach is often drenched in systemic insecticides and fungicides, enough to put it near the top of every list of contaminated produce.

Sound a bit like catalog copy? That's probably because I've been under their spell for years. I love leafing through gardening catalogs, love the photos of abundance on the bough, the hyperbolic descriptions of the flavors, the way the horticulturalists distinguish the acid balance of the pippin from the delectable aroma of the sheepnose. As a renter, however, I've had to admire these tantalizing fruits from afar. With the exception of a pot- ted lemon and a scattering of ill-conceived saplings left behind in various yards, this is the first chance I've had to indulge the fantasy of a backyard orchard.
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