I know I've mentioned this in previous years, but it always catches my attention. On our trip up Immetos this early morning (did we mention 5.5 miles either straight up or down? It was my first time because I had to train 6 months to get my bum knee in shape for this!), we noticed that the path/trail was lined with wild thyme and sage bushes. The road had a lot of wild capers plants. It was lovely to walk through the scented air as we brushed past.
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| Wild thyme on the mountain |
Then I walked to campus and nearly bumped my head on low-hanging pomegranates.
I've mentioned the citrus and plum trees on the street we walk daily to reach the grocery store, but this was a different street, and had an incredible variety of produce: on one short block there were pomegranates, olives, loquats, lemons, oranges, figs, and around the corner, possibly juniper berries.
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| The oranges will be ripe this winter. |
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| Figs might be ready just as we leave in late July. |
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| Olives will ripen in late November |
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| Lemons |
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| Loquat season is spring. |
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| Someone knows... are these juniper berries (used to flavor gin)? |
So just on that block alone, in the most populated city in Greece, on a street full of 4 story apartment buildings with tiny shared greenspaces, there is something ready to eat at the sidewalk in every season. What do we grow at the sidewalk in Jacksonville? Grass. There are a few untended, unrecognized loquat street trees. What does it say about them and us? Something about the importance of fresh, local food, our closeness to our food supply, our view of the purpose of our land. I read an article by Michael Pollan about grass, arguing that we value grass because historically that was what defined a big estate -- the long driveway providing a faraway view of the house displayed to best advantage against a green backdrop. Eventually we all wanted that effect. Landscape designers and suburb developers went for a parkland effect, linking houses together in a subdivision by a continuous swath of grass. Americans liked the openness that contrasted with the enclosure style of European gardens. And in the 1950s and 60s, our shift from rural to urban to suburban led us to shun signs of home food-production, so many cities outlawed poultry and small animals in the suburbs (like Jacksonville in the mid-1960s) and moved any gardens to the back (where many deed-restricted communities still require gardens to be). Here in Greece, the shift was more sudden and maybe people took more of their rural ways with them. We in the US are returning to local food and to using our land productively whereas Greece never lost it, even in the city. By being behind, they have ended up ahead.
I'm sorry, but I think your source is making simple stuff complicated. I grew up before the 1950's when every house in our Jewish inner city ghetto and those in the adjacent black neighborhood and in the hoity-toity ones further uptown had grass lawns front and back. Farms, too, had grass lawns around the farmhouse. I think people planted grass for the same reasons I do today: it is perennial, spreads and fills in, is relatively maintenance free, can be walked on and otherwise abused, and, compared to virtually all other plants, looks neat in most seasons of the year.
ReplyDeleteI think we don't plant fruit trees and gardens because we in the USA don't need the food. As evidence for this, during the war against the Nazis, food was scarce and required government rationing in order to supply the populace and troops and populations abroad. Lo, large sections of the populace, myself included, dug up front and/or back yards and planted what we called "victory gardens". They provided nourishment and provided the pleasure of gardens and the flavor of freshly picked vegetables, but also documented how much more work a garden is than a lawn of grass. Hence, the return of lawns and disappearance of gardens when food was again abundant.
I wish you happy travels, insightful new observations, and a happy birthday.
Love,
Dad