The grocery stores all have asparagus now. [View All]

[LeftyMom]

I love asparagus. The first appearance of woody, overpriced spears in the store, and the promise of affordable and good ones in a week or two, always means spring to me and summer's soon to follow when they're gone. Like spring in California, they're a pure but short-lived joy, to be savored for only a few weeks. But at some point, when I don't really recall, somebody realized they could grow them in East Bumfuck, South America and send them up here and we'd have asparagus in the winter too. And apparently wages for farm workers are even lower in East Bumfuck than in San Juaquin county, because it costs less to get asparagus from half a world away than the stuff from thirty miles south costs in season.

So now in the autumn grocery ads with the pumpkin and the nuts, there's asparagus and I can't bring myself to eat it. Asparagus belongs at the table at easter, maybe even for my birthday if things warmed up early, but it's not for November. I don't think losing all connection to seasonal harvests and the natural cycle of the land that sustains us is progress. That seasonal variation brings us greater variety, as we cycle through asparagus and zucchini and tomatoes and peppers and corn and squash, on through the seasons, our bodies get all that they need and we get the best each season has to offer us. So I'll enjoy my asparagus the way I always have, in the spring, nurtured by cool, wet winters and a few weeks of springtime California sun. But a winter squash or some potato soup sounds really good right now.