How did a nice girl like me.....

End up in a place like this. Not that Albuquerque isn't a mecca for folks with Seasonal Affective Disorder. The sunshine is great. But it's the damn desert, and I am a capital G Gardener. As in, I want lush. I want green. I want to grow my own food in the most comprehensive sense. Yes, the growing season is long, and it is true that my spinach survived all winter in my unprotected garden, but there is a downside. The fact is that drought is the law of the land here. Its the price we pay for all this sunshine.

I feel guilty using so much water for my gardens. It feels very irresponsible to try and grow all of my food in the desert. See, I'm from Pennsylvania, where "drought" means it didn't rain that week. You can walk out in the yard, accidentally spill some seeds, and voila! A garden. Not so in the Land of Enchantment. Sometimes I have to water twice a day to keep the green stuff going.

And yet, it is true that, for me, gardening is a hunger for more than food, more than pretty flowers. Playing in the dirt, making beautiful spaces, that's what I do to feed my body and my psyche. I've developed a serious grudge against store-bought vegetables. Yes, even the organic ones from the food co-op, even the ones from the farmer's market. I mean, they'll *do*, but they don't really do it for me. I'm like that old Jewish woman who took a fish from a fisherman's boat, inspected it, and tossed it back into the sea, saying "To me, it wasn't fresh." I want to walk out to my heavily mulched garden, and choose from the freshest of the fresh. And know for certain that it was grown with care, organically and as respectfully as possible.

The other really good side is that my two-and-a-half year-old daughter already loves zucchini, in large part because we go outside and treasure hunt in the zucchini plants. She eats it because it's got a story she understands. And also, I swear to God it tastes better than anything you can buy at a store.

So, I will be gardening in the God-forsaken desert this year. Turning my patch of Bermuda grass and prickly weeds into a real live garden of eatin'.