Bright Lights Chard With Panch Phoron

I have come to love chard. Although I still prefer gai lan, collards and kale, chard is fast becoming a favored green in our house. Which is good, because it is prolific here in Athens, and is very inexpensive at the farmer’s market. It also has a high amount of vitamins and minerals for the price, so not only is it a local and sustainable crop, it is good for us, too.

I especially love the brilliant colored stems of bright lights chard; the jewel-like tones contrast with the deep verdant green of the buttery leaves. The texture of the stems also adds textural interest because they are crisp and juicy, while the leaves are rich and velvety

The flavor is mild and agreeable, able to be assimilated into many different cuisines. I am particularly fond of using chard in enchilada fillings, but I have also found that it does well in Indian dishes.

Especially simple stir fries like this one: Chard with Panch Phoron.

As noted elsewhere, panch phoron is a Bengali mixture of equal parts of five spices: oniony nigella, musky cumin, sweet fennel, sharp mustard, and nutty fenugreek. Toasted in hot oil, and tossed with vegetables, the spice mixture is a fountain of flavor; when caramelized onions, golden garlic, chiles and lemon juice are added, a simple green like chard is elevated into a revelation of flavor. When the chard is as colorful as “bright Lights” the dish becomes as beautiful as it is flavorful.

And another bonus–it is all quick and easy to prepare.

A perfect dish served with dal, basmati rice and sliced tomatoes.

Bright Lights Chard With Panch Phoron

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons canola or mustard oil
1 medium yellow onion, peeled and thinly sliced
1-3 fresh red or green cayenne or serrano chile peppers, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon panch phoron
3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 pound chard, the very bottom of stems trimmed off, then leaves and stems cut into 1″ wide pieces, then roughly chopped
juice of one lemon
salt to taste

Method:

Heat oil in a heavy bottomed skillet over medium heat. Add onion and cook, stirring, until it is medium golden brown. Add cayenne, panch phoron and garlic and continue cooking until mustard seeds pop and the onions are dark reddish brown and garlic is golden colored.

Add chard, and lemon juice, and cook, stirring until leaves wilt and stems are tender crisp–this should take just a few minutes.

Add salt to taste and serve immediately with rice, a dal dish and other vegetable dishes for a delicious Indian vegetarian meal.

An Early Summer Country Classic: Creamed New Potatoes With Peas

Eating the local foods of early summer should never be anything but a sensual pleasure.

I always feel privileged to have grown up tasting the turn of the seasons, my body sustained on what grew from the labors of my family tilling the red clay soil of my grandparents’ farm. Our bodies themselves were made of that clay, of the sunlight that poured from seemingly endless blue skies and the rain that pounded our ridgetop and bottomland gardens.

I grew up knowing the rhythm of life unfolding, year, after year, in a succession of crops, each having their particular time in a farmer’s calendar.

All of us looked forward to an early summer dish, that in its time, appeared on the table several times a week. It was my mother’s favorite dish, and my grandmother and grandfather both loved it dearly.

Creamed new potatoes with baby peas was a dish of simplicity, containing nothing other than what was stated in its name, save a scant seasoning of salt, pepper, and spring onions.

It always started in the garden, with Grandma’s command that I fill her battered tin colander with pea pods. She always enjoined me to pick “The littlest ones, the babies of the plant–they are the sweetest,” as I trotted off to the cool shade of the trellised pea plants. She always sent me with plenty of time to pick, knowing full well that I would likely eat as many pea pods as I picked, so extra minutes had to be allotted.

She herself dug the potatoes, never quite trusting my clumsiness with the big shovel to not damage the roots of the plants. If she was still digging by the time I filled the colander, I could run along the potato row, picking up and dusting off the jawbreaker-sized tubers before gently depositing them in the bucket that swung from her arm. My efforts kept her from having to bend over quite so much, and that pleased her immensely.

In the kitchen, my job was to carefully rinse off the potatoes, scrubbing the dirt off with my fingers, so as to keep as much of the paper-thin skins intact as possible. Grandma, meanwhile shelled the tiny peas, her fingers expertly flicking the green spheres into a bowl, while casting the pods into the colander to be taken out and gifted to the chickens, the cows or the pigs, depending on whose turn it was to have a sweet treat.

I was always stealing a spent pod or two myself, to chew on. My Grandpa considered my preference for the pods of peas to the seeds a perverse personality quirk, but my oddities were allowed, as they seemed to cause me no harm. Son long as I left plenty for the livestock, he had no complaints.

Grandma cooked the dish simply, by slicing up spring onions, which are nothing more than baby globe onions, about the size of shooter marbles, and cooking them slowly in butter. Meanwhile, she boiled the potatoes until they were just tender, yielding easily to the touch of a fork. The peas went into the potato boiling water just before the potatoes were done, then the whole lot was drained.

The buttery onions had flour added, to make a loose roux, then evaporated milk was poured over the hot roux. Grandma would whisk the mixture vigorously with a fork, until the milk formed a medium-thick cream sauce, which she seasoned to taste with salt and pepper. Into the saucepan went the potatoes and peas and after a good stir, the lid was clapped over it and the fire was extinguished. When the rest of our meal was ready, the warm peas and potatoes were spooned into a dish, and set at the table with much fanfare.

I swear I would eat those in preference to everything else on the table, as would most of the rest of us. It never really mattered what else graced the table, really, because that simple dish outshone them all. We would eat and eat until we were nearly full to bursting on the creamy, earthy new potatoes and sugary sweet baby peas, appreciating the sprinkling of spring onion tops Grandma would shake over the bowl just before setting it on the table.

This weekend at the farmer’s market, I found tiny red new potatoes, and crisp sugar snap peas, along with spring onions, and best of all, the first garlic of the season!

Of course, I put into our string bag some of everything, and vowed to give Morganna a taste of my own childhood, though in truth, I made my own dish a bit differently from the way Grandma did.

For one thing, I added the fresh garlic, because it was too fragrant, sweet and tender not to.

(As you can see, Kat agrees on this point. It is something about my girls and I–we all are drawn to garlic and onions from an early age. My mother still talks about me teething by gumming scallions all day long, and Morganna once insisted upon buying her own head of garlic at a Middle Eastern market in Charleston, after carrying it all around the store, cradled to her bosom, and occasionally sticking it practically up her nose to sniff it loudly. She proclaimed to the proprietor of the store as he rang up our purchases, “Mordanna love darlic. Darlic so dood.”)

In addition, I used sugar snap peas, cut into cylinders rather than shelled garden peas. Why? I prefer the crisp texture and crunch of snap peas, and the fact is, they survive being picked better than little garden peas. I had no idea when the garden peas I saw at the market had been picked, so I had no way of knowing how sweet they would be, but the sugar snaps were all plump, small, well-hydrated and promised sweetness by their looks and delicate aroma.

Besides, I like them better anyway.

I also dressed it up with a splash of sherry, and a sprinkling of fresh mint at the end. The sherry added a nutty flavor and the mint gave a fresh grace note that emphasized the sweetness of the onions and peas without adding another level of sugar. It also cut through the richness of the cream sauce, which I made by reduction rather than by thickening it with a roux.

Morganna loved it, and requested that I make it again often, while the season is upon us.

How can I refuse her?

Creamed Sugar Snap Peas and New Potatoes

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 cup thinly sliced spring onions or scallions, white parts only
1 heaping tablespoon minced fresh garlic
1/4 cup dry sherry
1/2 cup chicken stock or vegetable broth
3/4 pound new potatoes (red or white skinned), scrubbed well and boiled in salted water until just tender, drained
1/2 pound sugar snap peas, strings removed and cut into 1/2″ wide cylinders
1/3 cup cream
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup minced fresh mint
1/4 cup thinly sliced spring onion or scallion tops

Method:

In a heavy bottomed skillet, heat the olive oil and melt the butter on medium heat. When the butter foams, add the spring onion slices, and cook, stirring, until they turn golden.

Add the garlic and continue cooking until the onions turn light tan, then deglaze the pan with the sherry, stirring while the alcohol boils off. Add the stock or broth, bring to a boil, stir in the potatoes and the peas, and the cream.

Stir well, and cook until the peas turn bright green, and the sauce reduces until it coats the potatoes nicely. Add salt and pepper to taste, then stir in mint and scallion tops.

Serve immediately.

Aprons Come Out of the Closet

I have recently developed a fascination with aprons.

Particularly, vintage aprons like our grandmothers, aunts and mothers used to wear.

Something about the myriad colors, shapes and textures of the appeals to me. It is fascinating to me how much time was spent in sewing and decorating an item of clothing whose first purpose is purely functional, meant to simply spare one’s clothing when one does messy jobs in the kitchen.

You have to remember that I come from a culinary arts background where aprons are strictly utilitarian: vast swaths of sturdy white fabric, easily bleached to sparkling perfection, which enrobe a cook or chef so that they can manage the often sticky and unpleasant jobs a professional kitchen entails. Wrapped in a long apron with a generous bib, a chef can wade through tasks as nasty as eviscerating and scaling thirty pounds of fish, cleaning the seeds and slimy orange placental tissue from huge pumpkins and cutting a primal cut of beef down into individual portions, then strip off the stained fabric, roll down the sleeves to her pristine chef’s coat and walk out into the dining room to greet guests or talk to a sales representative without reeking from the kitchen’s more unsightly labors.

When I was in culinary school, I and my classmates and our chef instructors went through aprons like crazy. We carried extras around with us, carefully bleached of any lingering stains and obsessively pressed, so if we made an utter hash of one, we had a backup to throw on so we could look fresh in an instant. We all did laundry at least every other day, even those of us who always bought extra aprons and side towels. On the advice of our chefs, we didn’t use laundry detergent to wash our uniforms and aprons, but instead used dishwasher detergent, usually Cascade, in order to get them perfectly clean and white with the least amount of trouble and work. (So here is a free tip for you–if you are washing whites that need a good bleaching, use Cascade either powder or gel. You don’t need much–just a tiny bit more than what you use in a dishwasher, and you will end up with sparkling clean cloth. You just don’t want to do this too often, because it seriously degrades cotton fabric over time. Trust me–I went through lots of aprons and chef’s coats in the course of eighteen months.)

Aprons are useful in a professional kitchen not just to protect the chef’s coat from technicolor food stains, but also come in handy as an impromptu side towel or hot pad, and even as a cloth to wipe up a sudden spill of dangerously hot liquid. I have even whipped off my own apron and used it as a bandage to quell the bleeding from another student’s accidentally cut finger.

As practical and sensible an item of clothing as an apron is to a chef, it is also part of their uniform. It proclaims to the world that this person, who wields authority and is a manager of people and comestibles, also gets his hands dirty and does a significant amount of physical labor.

There is a difference between a chef in her coat and a chef in her coat and her apron.

A chef in her coat may be at work, but she is likely checking over a delivery, doing payroll, putting together menu copy or constructing a work schedule. In the kitchen she may be, but she is not cooking.

It is only when she puts on the apron, tying it around her waist, and tucking a side towel neatly at her hip, that she steps up to the stove and begins to cook.

An apron signals to all the world that not only is this person a chef, he is a cook as well.

So, coming from this background, I find it somewhat strange that I have begun collecting vintage aprons from the 1930’s up the 1970’s. Not only have I begun collecting them, I have started -wearing- them in the kitchen.

These colorful confections, with decorative details such as appliqué pockets in the shapes of hearts or tulips, ruffled skirts, lines of rickrack and embroidery are all unfailingly feminine and even though most of them are utilitarian in nature, they certainly don’t look it. The cut of them, and the way the bibs are tailored are meant to accentuate the curves of a female body; this is particularly true of the styles popular in the 1950’s when feminine beauty and domesticity were entwined perfectly in the person of actress Donna Reed.

Zak was somewhat taken aback when I began picking up the odd vintage apron here and there, bringing them home and wearing them. When I told him that I wanted to start making colorful aprons once my sewing room is put together, he was speechless. Then, he sputtered, “But, that is so, so, so–anti-feminist! What about Betty Friedan? What about The Feminine Mystique?”

I couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt when he mentioned Betty Friedan’s seminal work which heralded the beginning of Second Wave Feminism, because it honestly is one the most influential books that has entered my psyche. Why? Well, because the lives she describes I saw all around me when I was growing up. Even though she was speaking primarily about the experiences of middle-class educated white women and I came from a working class white background, the crux of the book–that women’s identities were subsumed into the care of their families and homes to the detriment of everyone–was something I observed all around me. My family, my neighbors, my mother’s friends, my friends’ mothers, sisters, aunts, cousins–you get the picture. Most of them had some symptom or another of what Friedan called, “the problem with no name.”

Somehow or another aprons, at least the very feminine, colorful tailored bib aprons and ruffled half aprons, have become symbols of the oppression of women.

Only the boxy, straight-shaped butcher’s apron which chefs and butchers has escaped being viewed as a symbol of women’s servitude. I believe that the reason it has escaped this stigma is because it has traditionally been a male garment–most professional butchers, meatcutters and chefs for decades have been male, after all. And, the butcher’s apron, which is what I wore all through culinary school, is, as I mentioned before, a strictly utilitarian garment which not only protects the wearer and her clothing, but also is a part of the chef’s uniform, connoting prestige.

Home cooks, homemakers and housewives, however, do not get prestige. Not only were they devalued previous to the publication of The Feminine Mystique, they have often been devalued by the very feminists who claimed to want to uplift and help them. Femininity is not as highly valued as masculinity, so “our” garments are not highly respected either–and they have become symbols of work that is seen as highly detrimental to women’s souls.

I am not going to argue with Friedan’s assertion that when the only outlet women have for their personal expression of individuality and worth is found the care of their homes and families, that it takes away a their personhood. I agree that can be a brain-numbing and soul-killing occupation for anyone, -especially- if she is not granted a choice in the matter. (A choice is not a choice when it is the only option available, after all.)

But, I do think that it is somewhat silly that a useful and potentially beautiful garment like an apron has become a symbol of the oppression of American women such that if I, uber-feminist that I am, put one on, I am somehow betraying my own equality. I guess that if I wear an apron from the admittedly less-enlightened 1950’s, I am either longing to become some sort of Stepford-Wife Donna Reed June Cleaver clone, or I am not really serious about cooking, the way a chef is.

That is all just poppycock, pure and simple.

I like aprons, especially old ones.

There is something visceral about them, particularly the handmade ones, with the tiny careful stitches, and the embroidery on them, that speak to me of history.

I think about the women who made these aprons, and who wore them, and what they did in them. I think about farmwives carefully picking up eggs or even newly hatched chicks into the safety of a nest made of her gathered up apron. I think about my Grandma baking bread, of my Aunt Emma whipping up eggnog, and of my Mom canning tomatoes, all of them wrapped in colorful aprons which not only protected their clothes, but also brightened their days, and made them look pretty while they worked.

What, exactly is wrong with feeling and looking pretty while working in the kitchen, garden, or house?

White butcher’s aprons are very useful and functional, but they are not really attractive. There is also the issue that butcher’s aprons are not made to fit curvy women; the straight, blocky lines look quite good on men and very slender women, but for women with hourglass figures like mine-they tend to make us look pregnant or else ungainly. Or worse, both.

And, in my experience, after eighteen months of culinary school wearing clothes that were tailored for men which made me look a good forty pounds heavier than I am, my self-esteem took a beating.

And now that I am no longer in a professional kitchen, I see no reason to adhere to the uniform of a chef. I am free now to wear aprons that not only protect my own clothing, but also express my own sense of style.

In wearing old aprons which I have primarily found on eBay, I find that I feel a connection to the women of the past. How is can such a thing be anti-woman? And isn’t feminism about women–and giving us choices? Isn’t it about stretching boundaries and being who we are? Isn’t it about respecting women’s lives, including the ephemera that surrounds us? Isn’t it about our art, our creations, how we express our natures? Isn’t it about being both strong and nurturing?

Aren’t both Rosie the Riveter and Donna Reed both icons of femininity?

Why can I not celebrate them both, then? (Though, I have to admit I am much more partial to Rosie myself–if she just had an apron, she would be perfect….)

I am comforted by the fact that I am not alone in my interest in vintage aprons.

For one thing, Morganna shares my liking for them, and was thrilled when I bought her several old aprons for herself. (Granted, I also planned on copying them in a larger size for myself, but the colors were very Morganna.) She even wore one to school, as part of a very adorable outfit which you see her modeling for you in one of the photos illustrating this post.

Strangely, after the kids at school got over asking, “Why are you wearing an apron?” they decided that it looked cool. When they heard it was a vintage piece from the 1950’s, it became even -more- cool because it was old.

And, it isn’t just Morganna and I who are showing interest in vintage and vintage-inspired aprons.

Apparently, aprons have become trendy among some women, including bloggers. Cooks, crafters, seamstresses, moms, artists and women who just plain old like aprons have taken to making and wearing their own creations which get featured in the “Tie One On Project.” Looking through the photographs featured in the project, I cannot help but feel kinship with these women who use the canvas of an apron to express their individuality and creativity while making an object which is meant primarily to be functional.

To me, functional objects are only enhanced by being aesthetic as well. The converse–making art that is also somehow functional–is also highly appealing. Hence my interest in both cooking and quilting…there are few things more functional and basic than food and a means to keep warm, yet these can also be the means by which one can express the highest form of creativity imaginable.

Aprons are part of women, and thus a part of our stories and history. This fact is acknowledged and celebrated by a traveling museum exhibit currently touring the US that combines vintage aprons with photographs and oral histories and stories about them and the women who wore them. Titled “Apron Chronicles”, this show is the brainchild of author and apron collector EllynAnne Geisel and photographer Kristina Loggia, and is getting a good response from visitors wherever it goes. Geisel’s book, The Apron Book has been the finalist for several book awards and won the Independent Publisher Awards Gold Medal for 2007.

Aprons are coming out of the closet, and hopefully for good this time. While I missed out on the National Wear Your Apron Day this year, I will proudly participate next year.

Maybe I will go out wearing an apron over jeans and my Rosie the Riveter t-shirt.

I wonder that people will think of that?

Going Away for the Weekend

We are off traveling for a family reunion somewhere in the wilds of southern Ohio, and will be gone until Monday night.

I might post an update while I am gone,but don’t count on it.

Look for a post on Tuesday at the earliest.

Have a good weekend while we are gone!

Concerning Bees: The Fear Factor

The bees are dying.

They are dying of a strange disorder that causes the worker bees of a previously thriving honeybee hive to just fly away and never return. The brood (larvae) are left capped in their cells in the hive, with no one left to care for them. (Typically, adult bees will not leave a hive until the brood chambers have been uncapped.)

Thus far, no single cause has been found for this disorder, dubbed “Colony Collapse Disorder,” or CCD, while bees from across the United States, some parts of Europe, India, and South America eerily continue to die, silently and without warning.

And we will all die with them, because the tiny European honeybees are the pollinators for most of our food crops.

Who says?

Albert Einstein supposedly said so. “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

If that doesn’t scare the bejabbers out of you, nothing will.

And why is this happening?

Well, it could be the fault of genetically modified crops, otherwise known among the doomsayers as “frankenfood,” or it could be caused by cell phones making the bees’ homing instinct go awry so they cannot find their way home. Instead, they buzz around lost until they just fall down dead and exhausted. Both of these hypothesis have been put forth loudly in the media, with the significant subtext that this die-off is “all our fault, we are the ones to blame, and we should die for it.”

Or at least be scared to death over it.

It all sounds like a Twilight Zone episode, full of the creeping horror that in a very short span of time, civilization will collapse and most of humanity will starve to death, all because of the extinction of a single species of insect: the honeybee.

Scare-mongering sure sells newspapers, but it doesn’t necessarily make for a good understanding of a complex subject.

You see, the fact is, Albert Einstein probably didn’t really make that eloquent, chilling statement about bees and humans which is widely attributed to him. The first known use of that quote was in 1994, long after the esteemed scientist was dead, and so far, no one, including historians and scholars of the life of Einstein has reliably been able to trace that quote back to him having said it before he died.

In fact, the quote was probably made up and attributed to him for political purposes by a European beekeeper in 1994 during a spate of protests on the issue of cheaper imported honeys making it difficult for local beekeepers to stay financially solvent. I suppose that the real author of the quote will probably never be known, and it really doesn’t much matter–the fact is that even if Einstein -did- say it, and he was a genius, it doesn’t make the information contained in it factually correct. Einstein was a genius, yes, but a physicist, not a biologist or entomologist, so really–how could he predict the death of humans four years after the death of honeybees?

Not only did Einstein likely not make that famous dire prediction, but the issue of CCD is both more complex than most of the media is trumpeting, and likely not as apocalyptic.

In fact, it may not be a new phenomenon at all.

I bet most of you were wondering when I would jump in and post on the news stories related to CCD; it is a classic sort of story for Barbara to be concerned with and write about.

I haven’t before now for several reasons. First of all, while I read the very scary reports, including that quote from Einstein, which tied my stomach into knots and made me cradle my infant daughter, Kat, closer to my bosom in a seemingly futile gesture of protection, I was wary of jumping in on the “gloom and doom environmental apocalypse bandwagon” and adding my voice to the mounting media hysteria.

I wanted to hold off and do a bit of research and wait and see if there might arise some more moderate voices of reason from the scientific community.

I also wanted to take the time to talk to some beekeepers around here in Ohio and see what they had to say. (And what they said, each and every one of them, made me take a step back, a deep breath, and start digging a little deeper before running around like Chicken Little, screaming, “The end of the world is nigh!” Thank goodness for calm, reasonable bee keepers, including my friend Angela who said, “Oh, I really wish the newspapers wouldn’t write about this bee business yet. They always make it sound worse than it is. Bees die off periodically–it is what they do. But the world isn’t going to end over it now–it has been happening for years.”)

And I had been sitting on it for a while now, and probably still would be sitting, and writing about a really nice recipe today, if I hadn’t checked out Salon today to see this headline: “Who Killed the Honeybees?”

For all that the headline is pretty sensationalistic, and the graphic used to illustrate the article is way over the top, the piece itself, which is a round-table discussion/interview with four different experts on honeybees and CCD, is pretty informative and interesting.

And not nearly as scary as the editors made it sound like what with their headline and graphics choice and all.

The four experts had widely divergent views on the phenomenon of these honeybee die-offs, divergent enough to paint a clear picture to me that there is no consensus as to how bad CCD is, how widespread it really is, what could be causing it and how much it has to do with human ecological disruption.

Jeffery Pettis, research leader of the seriously underfunded USDA honeybee lab is of the opinion that this die-off is the worst in recorded history. He is also of the opinion that genetically modified crops are not at fault, and believes, in fact, that CCD is likely caused not by a single factor, but two or perhaps three co-factors working together in tandem. He believes that stressful conditions for the bees may be compromising their immunity to disease or parasites, combined with drought conditions which lead to less nutritive pollen for the bees which can lead to starvation, further stress and an even more compromised immune system.

Eric Mussen, of the Honey Bee Research Facility at the University of California at Davis, points to the fact that similar die-offs have occurred historically, and it may simply be cyclical. He also notes that the genetically-modified Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis–a species of bacteria which has been used by organic farmers to control insects for years–crops are now being grown that include the Bt within the plant tissues themselves) crops may have weakened honeybee’s immunity to parasites.

Wayne Esaias, of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and an amateur beekeeper who has kept careful records of the weather and its effect on his backyard bee hives for years, is of the belief that the erratic weather patterns caused by global warming is at least a factor in CCD, if not the sole cause of this troubling disorder. He cites the fact that the pollen and nectar flow of summer comes, on average, a month earlier now than it did in the 1970’s. This abrupt change in food supply may have come too quickly for honeybees to usefully adapt, thus somehow precipitating the unusual behaviors seen in CCD.

John McDonald, a biologist, beekeeper and farmer is pretty sure that genetically modified Bt crops have something to do with CCD, even though both Pettis and Mussen disagree with him. He wrote an eloquent op-ed piece recently for the San Francisco Chronicle on the subject outlining his concerns.

About the only thing that these experts agree on when it comes to CCD is that there is a problem, and cell phones probably are not causing it.

Two troubling facts jumped out at me as I read the Salon article.

One is that intensive monocropping, which is where acre after acre of nothing but a single variety of crop is planted–which is standard operating procedure for modern industrial farms–may be related to loss of food plants for bees and other pollinators to eat when the agricultural plants are finished blooming.

The other is that the National Academy of Sciences recently published a study that showed that all pollinators, not just honeybees, but native bees, butterflies, and wasps, all of which rely on a diversity of flowering plants are declining. No cause is known, but expanding urbanization, habitat loss, and ever-increasing monocropping and pesticide use may all be to blame.

Those two facts hit home for me, because when we lived in Pataskala, we lived very close to the largest orchard in Ohio, as well as down the road from a local hobby beekeeper. We also inherited a large garden, which included sweeping beds that were empty of all but foundation plantings: a few flowering and fruiting shrubs–lilacs, wiegela and barberry primarily–a picturesque stand of river birches, some hardy bulbs and about eight acres of woodlands.

Since our home looked architecturally like a witch’s cottage in the woods, we chose to emulate the English cottage garden in the abandoned beds and borders which came with our home. The herbaceous borders were largely empty, so we filled them with a plethora of blooming perennials, annuals, shrubs, herbs and vegetables, in a crowded, floriferous display of rampant blooms and foliage that lasted for three seasons of the year. (All of the photographs illustrating this post came from that garden.)

Over the three years we lived there, our wildly overgrown and productive gardens were a hub of insect and bird activity. Not only did we have honeybees galore buzzing over from our neighbor’s hives, we had plenty of other pollinators, too: native bumblebees, carpenter bees, butterflies, wasps, moths and hummingbirds. I even managed to see and photograph a rare sight–a hummingbird moth.

Since we have moved to Athens, however, I must say–I have not seen nearly the same amount of activity. This likely has to do with our lack of as large a garden. As we work to put together Kat’s garden, and in years to come, as we terrace the huge back slope and turn it into a productive space filled with a diverse group of flowering plants, I suspect that we will once more see a large amount of insect pollinators.

At least I hope so.

At any rate, though I wasn’t nearly as disheartened after reading the Salon article as I could have been, I was still downcast, until I ran across today’s posting on The Straight Dope concerning the very topic of CCD. Written by Douglas Yanega, an entomologist from the University of California, Riverside, who has been maintaining the Wikipedia page on the subject of CCD, the overview is succinct, and highly skeptical of the idea that this particular bee die-off is as apocalyptic as most of the major news media is making it out to be.

Yanega says, “… there’s no reason at this point to think European honey bees are going to be wiped out, now or ever. The die-offs so far appear to affect some beekeepers more than others, sometimes in the same area. That’s one reason scientists are so puzzled, but it strongly suggests the losses may have something to do with how individual beekeepers are managing their bees. The “significant percentage” of failing hives is still a drop in the bucket when viewed against the global population of honey bees, and there are lots of beekeepers (even in the U.S., which appears hardest hit) who have not had, and may never have, significant losses of colonies. Plenty of honey bees remain to replace the ones that have died. It’s not yet time to scream that the sky is falling.”

So there we are: the sky isn’t really falling, every honeybee in the world isn’t going to die tomorrow, and we humans are probably not going to starve to death within four years. I could feel that knot in my belly begin to relax a wee bit. I highly suggest Yanega’s two articles and the Salon piece as a remedy to the fearmongering that has been running rampant in the media on the issue of bees up until now.

Mind you, CCD is still a puzzling, and the decline of native pollinators is still bugging me. (No pun intended. No, really.) But, it is good to know that I don’t need to freak out over the issue and neither do you.

That said, I would still like folks to get out in the garden, and plant some extra flowers, you know, for the sake of the birds and the bees. (And yourself. Because, playing in the dirt is good for you. )

Add to the diversity of your local biosphere by finding out what flowers and plants attract butterflies, hummingbirds and bees, and plant as many of them as you can cram into whatever patch of dirt (even if it is a pot on your deck) you can. Every little bit helps, and not only that, but looking at flowers helps to lower your blood pressure after reading scary headlines like, “The BEES are DYING and SO ARE WE!!!!!”

You can even go a step farther, like my friend Angela, and keep a small hive of bees in your own urban garden.

Urban beekeeping is on the rise in the US, Canada, and the UK, and may help boost the number of pollinators in any given area. It also would give you a local supply of honey that came primarily from your own flowers, grown on your own land. That is pretty darned cool.

Basically, what I am advocating is this: don’t worry so much, or if you are worried–get up and do a little something to alleviate it.

Whether that means reading a little deeper, beyond the screaming headlines, or planting some monarda and echinacea, or even installing a beehive in your backyard, doing something about what is stressing you is a good bit healthier than just fretting and losing sleep over a seemingly insurmountable issue.