Long Time Gone

A couple of weeks ago it was Earth Day. Or Earth Week. Because days have a habit of turning into weeks in some cases, except for when you really want it to. Like Halloween. Why can't Halloween be a week?

During Earth Week, greening everything was everywhere. There were seminars on how to green apartments, offices, attics, pots, pans, socks, and shoes. There were seminars on how to green anything in the world. And the one I went to was how to grow your own herbs.

Before I entered the seminar, I knew it was a bad idea. There is a small, but strong part of me that wonders every time I buy prepared food if it would have been better if I would have made it, if I could really just sew that skirt, or if I could really make my own spaghetti sauce with tomatoes I grew myself. It is the part of me that I'm scared will one day show up to some corporate firm wearing an apron and wiping her floured hands all over herself.

(Why I would be in a high rise office is beyond me, but there we are)

So I went to this herb workshop with my boss, and upon entering was greeted with the fresh smell of plants of all sorts. Edible ones, ones that sang, ones that would make a turkey dinner and serve it up to 25 guests. It was a veritable rainforest in the classroom, and we were allowed to take the sprig of one plant to start our own garden.

Since I hemmed and hawed about it far too long, and didn't get first choice, I ended up with Cuban oregano. Which I had no idea what to use for, but it is a start. The most beautiful Cuban oregano plant was mine, and I left the seminar glowing. And the glow lasted until I went back to work, where I was told that my oregano plant looked a little...frail. This is because they are not visionaries like I am. I see in the future a place where I will spin my own clothes from the wool of the sheep I have out in the back, where I will milk my own cows and bake everything in the world. And then my Cuban oregano plant will look like this: