blog-urge, food/farming-companions

ohp, it caught me. an urge to blog - because i was being so productive before now and felt i deserved a break. that is just funny and silly. really, i am blogging because i've not done any work since 11:30am, and i still have many pages to write and an exam to study for. but you know, when a state of emergency is called in your city because everything's flooded, then you get home and realize the dining room flooded while you were gone, and all tomorrow's exams have been postponed, and you decide your body is exhausted of all energy and needs a nap, and a dear friend calls who you've been hoping to talk to soon, and your housemate (and you) want to gossip, and the dishes need washing, and the laundry needs doing, and you're about to graduate, etc., etc. - you can't very well be expected to be productive - especially in the midst of finals.

so what am i doing but comparing friends' blogs and wondering if i should convert to wordpress or change this or that about the appearance or format of my current blog? or should i be more disciplined about the topics i blog about, so that it's content worth reading? these are questions to be answered - later. after finals. when i have time to decide how my life is going to be after i graduate. after i graduate! aah!!!

so, really, what i wanted to comment on is how lovely and fun it is that i have so many friends that are so into food, and now quite a few are beginning to blog about it - how fun! first, my dear kvl started a blog for a few of us to post on with recipes, food experiences, etc. i've been a poor contributor to said blog, but i do hope to actually pay attention to this blog and even have things to contribute to it some day in the near future - and then actually contribute. i know blair has blogged plenty about food the past 3 years. jacquie is also posting many of her food practices. and now joe has a whole blog of his own about his culinary ventures.

and apart from the blogging aspect of food, i have a friend who is a chef in nyc, a friend in england who loves farming, procuring local food, and cooking with her husband and hopes to start a farm back in the states, a friend in boston working with a farm to school initiative, a friend who just bought with her husband a 2-acre piece of land in e.tn on which they will grow veggies and raise animals (and raise their baby), lots o' farming friends in nashville including a building momentum at the divinity school, lots o' friends who love cooking and eating in nashville including my dear closest girlfriends, all my sojo folks who i shared so many meals with, all my lilly folks who i shared so many meals with, even my mom and sister who have become interested in farming (even if through facebook) and of course my dad who has always been a big gardener, friends who are starting their own little garden plots, friends who are working on church gardens, my own church's community garden, and new friends all the time everywhere it seems that love-love-love food, want to grow it, want to cook it, want to learn about it, get their hands on it, want to have particular plots of land - in arkansas, tennessee, etc. oh, it makes me wiggle with delight.

and as for myself, i'm taking things in stride - i have my little salsa combo planter in my windowsill. 1 pepper, 2 weak cilantros, and a bajillion tomato seedlings which i tried to thin out from each other earlier. i really need to re-pot them but don't have new pots yet. (this is a task for after finals - along with fertilizing them.) i love tomatoes, so i'm soooo excited!!! i do hope they keep staying as strong as they've seemed thus far. but in the meantime, in just my little mini-gardening task earlier of thinning them, i got a little swept off my feet by the smell of the dirt, the pepper plant, and the tomato plants - these are the real deal. they're real tomatoes, y'all. they smell like tomato plants, and they're going to bear real tomatoes some day.

three words which bring me almost-eschatological joy - that is, if we're ok with saying the eschaton will be coming in early august. tomato. art. fest.

eeeeeeek!!!