This is the free, Sunday edition of Culture Study — the newsletter from Anne Helen Petersen, which you can read about here. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing. My garden is ugly. Not, like, “overgrown and beautifully, lusciously ugly” or “filled with thriving natural grasses that aren’t photogenic” ugly. It’s just bad. Parts of it are straight up dead. This year alone I’ve battled: root rot, slugs, deer, powdery mildew, some other kind of mildew, little tiny black beetles that aren’t flea beetles, little tiny black beetles that ARE flea beetles, cabbage moths, poor pollination, torrential June rains, and blistering August heat.
I love this: "the great joy I get, as Samin Nostrat wrote about so beautifully, in watching a plant grow and change, even if it’s not growing and changing quite the way I’d like it to." this is what parenting is like (or should be like: you don't get to choose who kids are or what and how they will become that person, and if you can let go of your expectations about it, it's really fun to watch them become themselves!)
"...none of it feels as good as actually figuring out something you like to do, and then doing it as if no one was watching, and no one ever will, and it will never, ever find a place on your resume." As a millennial growing up in this new age capitalism where all my peers are continuously doing the most, I find comfort in that statement. Thanks for the newsletter, have a great week!
yeah my garden is wrecked by chipmunks and birds BUT! It's been a joy to see my peppers go off, and to also see what volunteer plants shoot up. Right now my volunteer tomatoes are restoring my soul after the my tomatoes were ravaged.
I share a garden with my grandmother, who is a major green thumb (she grew up on a farm in the South). She consistently outproduces me and its hilarious but I'm learning a lot :)
I just dug out, among other edible leaves that had gone bleached and ugly, my flat-leaf parsley, prepping my planter boxes for the next round. When I pulled them up by the roots, those roots smell delicious! Anybody here eat those? How do you like them?
I love this: "the great joy I get, as Samin Nostrat wrote about so beautifully, in watching a plant grow and change, even if it’s not growing and changing quite the way I’d like it to." this is what parenting is like (or should be like: you don't get to choose who kids are or what and how they will become that person, and if you can let go of your expectations about it, it's really fun to watch them become themselves!)
"...none of it feels as good as actually figuring out something you like to do, and then doing it as if no one was watching, and no one ever will, and it will never, ever find a place on your resume." As a millennial growing up in this new age capitalism where all my peers are continuously doing the most, I find comfort in that statement. Thanks for the newsletter, have a great week!
yeah my garden is wrecked by chipmunks and birds BUT! It's been a joy to see my peppers go off, and to also see what volunteer plants shoot up. Right now my volunteer tomatoes are restoring my soul after the my tomatoes were ravaged.
I share a garden with my grandmother, who is a major green thumb (she grew up on a farm in the South). She consistently outproduces me and its hilarious but I'm learning a lot :)
Thank you for the reminder that not everything has to be a side hustle and social media photo shoot
I am an herb grower. Critters seem to leave my herbs alone!!
I just dug out, among other edible leaves that had gone bleached and ugly, my flat-leaf parsley, prepping my planter boxes for the next round. When I pulled them up by the roots, those roots smell delicious! Anybody here eat those? How do you like them?
I love this. I was A distracted gardener. My young adult daughter -sheltering with us for months- took the helm. She’s a natural.