estrawberries

 StrawPoem2

AntFinger

BugPoem1

radishes

Radish3

Egg

EGG

Reader, in your hand you hold

A silver case, a box of gold.

I have no door, however small,

Unless you pierce my tender wall,

And there’s no skill in healing then

Shall ever make me whole again.

Show pity, Reader, for my plight:

Let be, or else consume me quite.

– Jay MacPherson

All poems from Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Poems About Small Things, selected by Myra Cohn Livingston, HarperCollins, 1994.

*  *  *

Barbara Kingsolver, author of several New York Times best-sellers including The Poisonwood Bible, published her first work of non-fiction, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food in 2007, which makes the case for eating local. Here is an excerpt from the book:

“This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air.”

The blurb from GoodReads website entices to read more:

Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that’s better for the neighborhood and also better on the table.

Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.

Depending on where you live, you are enjoying some fresh fruits, vegetables, or flowers this time of year. 

What appeals to your senses right now?