I’m sort of aghast at the wide-eyed amazement expressed in this Era piece, but then again, over the course of the past couple weeks I’ve had several people say to me - in almost conspiratorial/apologetic tones - that they’re growing some of their own vegetables this year.

Revolutionary!

But apparently it is. Which sort of flabbergasts me; we’ve grown tomatoes and broccoli and lettuce and beans and strawberries and raspberries and watermelon and zucchini (and more zucchini) for years, and it ain’t like we live on a farm. You can do all of this, amazingly enough, in your own backyard; you’ve got to screen it to keep out the bunny rabbits, and we have a particularly thieving groundhog. Two years ago we, and the neighbor, got the tomato blight. But get yourself some wire mesh and maybe some fresh soil and you’re all right; and yes, it is nice to grow your own, or as much of your own as you can.

But it’s the kind of thing that I might have thought everyone always did. I mean, why wouldn’t you do this? But then the same might be said across the board. Why is it only now, with gas prices sky high, that we look to conserve? Now, with inflation creeping up, that we seek to save a few pennies? Why not do these things, you know, as a matter of course? Frugality once marked this nation, and really marked this particular corner of it. We’ve lost that in recent decades. Might be making a comeback, it seems.