We’ll Be Having Venison and Root Vegetables for Dinner Next Week

You can get a lot in a city, but you can’t get a garden in your own yard – at least not with the size of my yard – and with Spring truly here, the urge to drive my hands into the earth has become embarrassingly present.

I have flower beds, of course, and flower boxes on the house. A Stella daylily and three Hollyhocks were added to the alley just last Sunday.

But there’s no tomatoes.

And the lack of my own tomatoes?

That’s wrong.

Honestly, after several (seemingly) years of non-stop winter, I’m so taken with the explosion of life outdoors that the promise of flowers makes my pupils dilate like a speed freak's.

But life isn't always about flowers, is it?

Sometimes, it's about tomatoes and other things that you crave, fresh.

Oh, sure, I suppose I could plant them in a large pot in the backyard, but what would I complain about then?

And that got me thinking.

What would – what would it look like if we could only eat what could be grown locally?

For me? Oh, we’ve already moved far from the tasty tomato, my friend. We’re looking at rows and rows of empty grocery store aisles. No oranges! No papaya or mango or bananas or any fruit at all outside of berries and apples.

We’d have to go back to buying fruit out of Mexicans’ back seats!

My extremities go cold as I consider the foods that would disappear completely if not seasonally.

Somebody hold me.

Rice. Peanuts. Jicama. Water chestnuts.

Avocadoes.

Avocadoes?!

Oh, God! Not the guacamole!

Ladies and gentlemen, I never fully realized this, but I’m living in a house of cards.