My favorite seed catalog came in today’s mail: organic Floriani red flint corn, green meat radish, Bolivian rainbow pepper, purple bac choy, ruby streaks mustard. These are the reasons I started gardening–I was awed by the incredible diversity of life I could sustain on my little corner of earth. There were other reasons too. After my urban upbringing, I longed for the pastoral and bucolic ideal of self sufficiency and thriftiness. And certainly there were the political reasons: getting...