Good evening, Netizens...

While I'll concede here in Eastern Washington, it is perhaps a long time before we will once again begin turning the soil in preparation for our gardens, it seems inevitable that once again some of our families will begin that annual ritual of gardening. Some years, such as the most-recent, all our efforts have been less productive than we had originally hoped for, as Mother Nature does have a habit of either rewarding our efforts with bounty, while other years nothing seems to grow as it should. Or, as some of the old-time farmers have suggested, anytime you plant a crop, regardless of its scope, you are gambling with God.

Any optimism I may ever enjoy about gardening stems from several years ago when, against the odds, Suzie planted row after row of sweet corn along the East Side of our house. As the fates would have it, she planted the sweet corn, a crop that doesn't always thrive in urban gardens, in an area where we had been dumping our yard wastes for several years. The net result was that, due to the enriched soil, we had a plentiful stand of tall sweet corn, so much so, in fact, that we shared our wealth with the neighbors. Although last summer, despite the cool weather playing havoc with our tomato crop, we still managed to eat lots of tomatoes.

In this edition of David Horsey's excellent cartoons we see a side of politics which, at least from my vantage point, I had not considered-- the politicizing of First Lady Michelle Obama's garden in part of the White House lawn. According to my limited sources, all the produce that comes about as a result of Michelle Obama's gardening goes to good, properly charitable causes, food banks and such, while some of it actually is used in the White House kitchens for meals.

Of course, it does seem possible that almost anything either President or Michelle Obama does will probably be misconstrued or otherwise painted off-color by the various members of the Republican Right Wing, but then your opinions may differ.

Dave

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