My urban homestead Producing food on a city lot

Part of the joy of seasonal living is the lavish abundance of late summer. Tomatoes and eggplants are sunkissed and beautiful, a wide variety of fruit is available, and meals seem to plan themselves. But even if you aren’t a cook-it-at-home sort of person, this is the time to fill your house with flowers. Local flowers are beautiful, and they don’t cause ground to be poisoned, workers to be exposed  to toxins, and refrigerated trucks to be filled with petroleum to haul them around. They are a pure and good thing, and in a few more weeks we’ll have the first frosts and they won’t be here any more, so run to your nearest farmer’s market and indulge. I buy flowers at the downtown market at Central and Eighth and at the Corrales market. I’m sure that other markets have similar offerings. If you go to the Downtown market, see Chispas Farms for zinnias and Majestic Farms for sunflowers. Get there early, because the flowers sell out fast.

   A writer whom I admire once described buying flowers at a French market, then carrying them while meeting friends for lunch at a cafe’. The waitress fussed about the “mess” and pointed out that artificial  flowers would last much longer, to which a gentleman at the table replied “But, madame,  you too will wither and grow old, and you too must be appreciated and loved while you are in bloom.” Exactly.