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A leftist’s view and spin on seasonal rituals.

I wonder how much overlap there is between home gardeners/preppers and the people mentioned in this article. Hard work vs. the imitation of hard work.

Someone has commented on the presence of the suburban lawn as a yearning for past agricultural practices: fields to be maintained and tilled. In the autumn, at least in this country, people flock to the supermarket to decorate the porches of these same suburban homes with harvest artifacts: shocks of corn, huge irregular pumpkins, none of which were grown by the homeowner but are supposed to give the same sense of productivity and satisfaction.

“Someone has commented on the presence of the suburban lawn as a yearning for past agricultural practices: fields to be maintained and tilled.”

I saw a show on the lawns and gardens of old English manor houses. The line of thought on this show was having a large grass lawn and ornamental plants, hedges, follies, etc., was a demonstration of wealth by not needing to have cash crops or pasture occupying every square foot of available land.

"...America’s ever-expanding autumn industrial complex..."

Good God. I think this person really is serious. When I read this passage, I had to double back and re-read, thinking that it was going to be a funny piece, but...he is apparently dead serious.

For anyone who has gone apple picking (or strawberry picking, etc.) it isn't about imitating work. It is about doing something with other people (usually small kids) being outdoors, and...getting the produce you want.

With one lone exception, I don't engage in this kind of thing because my time is valuable to me and I am not using the exercise to entertain kids. I haven't gone apple picking in decades.

But I do fish and I have manually dug for clams, because they offer me something I cannot buy in a store. In the case of fish, being on the ocean, being with buddies, and that taste that only freshly caught Cod can provide. And drinking beer. In the case of clamming, deciding which clams you keep, and eating them with the knowledge that you know where they came from and that you did it yourself, with an aching back to prove it. And drinking beer. (I created this logo as a joke some years ago and made t-shirs for my buddy and others of us who used to clam when we were all staying up in Maine...

Reading this article (I actually did read it) all I could think of was...this guy needs to get get outside, get laid, get drunk, put down his phone, get off the computer, and probably all of them.

How pathetic it was to read.

Lawn people definitely have some issues. Then again, I once lived across the street from a person that would vacuum his shrubberies with a really loud shopvac early every Sunday morning right before he would start scrubbing his drive way (No, he wasnt a mechanic, for him that would be dirty and yucky). It could be worse.

As Freshprince points out, once upon a time people knew that the apples in the store were there because they shipped well, not because they tasted good. Different kinds of apples also have different purposes and special purpose apples arent ever in the store.

Unfortunately for those that know better, many orchard owners have gotten away from having much in the way of the non commercial varieties, not that it makes much of a difference as the modern urban agritourist doesnt know the difference anyway.