I am so excited!

The mail came yesterday! My seeds are here!

This weekend I get to plant 3 kinds of lettuce, radishes, peas, chard, and spinach. I also get to start tomatoes and chili in egg cartons, for transplanting later.

So why did I have to wait for the mail? Why not just schlep on down to Wal-Mart and buy my seeds there? Why start the salsa in the window instead of buying already started plants and plopping them into the ground next May?

I made a big mistake. I read "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver. Then I started researching heirloom seeds and GMOs and local economies and now I think that I'll get struck by lightning if I go to Wal-Mart. (I remember one of my favorite Emo Phillips comments: "I went to Wal-Mart, which is where everybody goes sooner or later if they've lived a life without God.")

So the seeds that came in the mail are heirloom seeds. They're not hybrids, they're not Genetically Modified Organisms or what ever the "O" stands for, they're, wow, like, tomatoes and lettuce that looks like what Thomas Jefferson grew in his garden. They're (hopefully) going to be those strange bumpy, warty vegetables that you see in the health food stores.

The seed packages came with handwritten titles and instructions, all packaged in a brown paper envelope. I felt a little illicit opening it, like I had gotten contraband or maybe porn. I chuckled at what the postman had to have thought - how disappointed he would be if he knew that it was just heirloom seeds! I will never tell him.

Old seeds - I confess that I like this idea.

I like that the food that my family and I will be eating will be real, instead of Monsanto mutants.
I like that next year I won't have to buy these specific seeds again, because the seeds out of the vegetables will be viable, just like they should be. It's disconcerting that I've become so accustomed to the limitations of hybrids that I think that it's pretty cool that seeds will sprout.
I'm actually a little bit nervous. Me, who has been gardening for 45 years. (My first garden was when I was 5 or so. My Mom gave me radish and zinnia seeds. I was so proud of my radishes, and refused to harvest and eat them. I wonder if they're still there at that house in Prescott, those poor petrified radishes?)

So here's my holiday weekend. I get to go out to my listing at Merritt Ranch (Ooh! An opportunity for a shameless plug!) in Cornville, the beautiful 10.41 irrigated acres of horse property, Arizona realtor.com ID# 144467, and see if Megan will let me carry away some good aged horse manure. I'll get blisters working it into the dirt. I'll fix the electric fence, I will certainly get into it a time or two, I will cuss, and I will plant some good salad and salsa.

Yes, this is my idea of fun. The Jeep will smell funny for a while, but it's a good funny.

Life is good, warty tomatoes and all.