At 02:49 AM 10/12/1999 , you wrote:
>Sad post
>
>Though I'm not sure about the analysis of small scale food growing. Saw
>recently a figure that suggested that in the UK over 20% of vegetable
>production is done in back gardens and that that percentage may actually be
>rising. What I'm seeing here in Ireland is that people buy a newly built
>house, plant grass and shrubs and cover them with chemicals, get bored with
>the look of it and add flowers, start to read up and watch gardening
>programmes and cut back on the chemicals and start putting a few veggies
>in. 10 years down the road that house often has a nice healthy mixture of
>food, flowers and places to play. Maybe the same thing will happen
>elsewhere in this evolving world.
I do not see that here at all. They buy the house and the CC&Rs proscribe
what is allowed in the front yard. The back yard gets a pool or a slab of
concrete and a few plants. The whole thing is maintained by minimum wage
gardeners using the latest from Ortho.
I live in a semi rural area with most houses on 2 acres. The large farms
were orange groves but many have fallen into the hands of speculators who
have turned off the water. Few homes have a real garden and fewer still
have animals unless you count the starving horses.
Don Bowen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Valley Center, CA Senior Software Engineer
C/C++, Internet, embedded systems
http://members.cts.com/crash/d/donb
http://www.oldengine.org/members/ihc14
http://www.oldengine.org/members/ferguson/
