Gardening: your civic duty

We walked into the Picasso exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and everything looked so familiar. I had seen and hated that Matt Weber piece before… I recognized that sculpture… and suddenly it dawned on me… It was the same Picasso exhibit that I has seen in New York at the Whitney Museum in November.

Anyhow, we loved SFMOMA! There were two fantastic temporary exhibits: photographs by Henry Wessel and the SECA Victory Gardens by Amy Franceschini. Amy’s work focused on shaping agricultural and food policy and encouraging people to grow gardens for their food supply (learn more here). I am so excited about this! I had never heard of Victory Gardens before:

“Victory gardens were vegetable, fruit, and herb gardens planted at private residences in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom during World Wars I and II to reduce pressure on the public food supply. In addition to aiding the war effort, these gardens were considered civil morale boosters in that gardeners could feel empowered by their labor and rewarded by the produce grown.” (link)

How cool is that?! In the exhibition they showed historical photographs of the fields in front of City Hall transformed into gardens. What a shame these practices (and ideology) have fallen by the wayside! I am so hopeful for a resurgence.

One of David and my longstanding goals is to grow our own food and, as vegetarians, we feel we could maybe just pull it off. I really, really can’t wait for us to own land. Before we redo the bathrooms or refinish the floors, we are going to sew our garden…