Give us rain in its time, and in spring spread flowers… (Translated from a song by Avi Koren)
The season to request rain is over, and the flowers are now scattered all around. There are still some cyclamens (rakafot), along with the many summer flowers that have already raised their smiling heads.
It is a pleasure to see everything happening at its time, at the right time for it, and it is not for nothing that the Jewish blessing says: Besha’a Tova "May it be at a good time". The meaning of this is that a thing should happen at a time that is good for it to happen, when it brings a blessing.
I find it amazing how nature works out so that everything has its best time, and it is in synergy with everything around it – animals have babies in the spring when it is getting warm, the birds migrate in the spring and the fall when the weather is changing (one day I will understand how they get along without GPS and without arguing who leads the migration), the abundance brought by spring and summer and the moment that summer knows to make way for fall and winter (about the time when we all feel that it is impossible to bear even one more day of heat). Everything moves at the right pace, getting along with all the elements around it, like a drawing with infinite fractals….
Also our bodies know how to find the right place and time for it to signal to us. What a pleasure to go to bed when tired and not to stay awake with coffee until all the necessary tasks are completed. What a pleasure to eat when hungry, not before because of a certain hour of the day, nor later cause we didn’t find the time to. At the right time. In my opinion, this is how our body should become accustomed to acting, according to what is best for it, and it knows how to signal to us about this, when in good health and feeling happy. Maybe in a few hundred years we will be able to prosper even if we sleep all day and are awake all night and consume mostly Coke and Bisli. If we can survive on them until then so that our body gets used to treating them as nutritious foods, it may happen. But until then, we should listen to what our body is telling us now.
Eastern traditions, the Chinese and the Indians (At least them. Other cultures I don’t really know about) also know that nutrition needs to be adjusted according to the seasons of the year. What we should eat in the summer is not the best for our body in the winter. And vice versa. And we also know that if we pay attention to the natural growth of the food around us, and not the growth under totally artificial conditions, it is easy to see that the fruits of winter are, of course, not the fruits of the summer. As it is said “the path is wiser than the hiker”, and nature offers us what is healthiest for the body to consume at each time of year.
The variety of organic fruit in the store right now is a bit disappointing: mainly citrus fruits left from the winter, along with organic papaya,organic bananas, organic avocado. The summer fruits have not yet arrived. That is, they have not yet arrived to us. In places where they sell fruits that have undergone various kinds of treatments and tricks in order to grow them out of season, they have already arrived (a bit under-ripe, maybe engineered, maybe sprayed, I truly do not know much about it but it's certainly unnatural). Or maybe they grew on other continents, were picked who knows when, packed, stored, shipped…. It is clear to see that it is not yet time for peaches, nectarines, cherries, apricots and plums that grow naturally – they are all part of the almond family that just recently was in bloom, and is now tending to its immature unripened fruits, which look cute and green. These deciduous organic fruit trees bloom only after the almond trees, whose growth signals the other trees that it’s time to wake up and bloom, so that while the almond blossom is at its peak, the rest are just drinking their tree- coffee trying to wake up. So, I ask you, how can we expect natural, high quality, organic fruits right now?
As my friend’s 5 year-old recites: "Wait a minute, patience cannot be bought in any store” (this rhymes in Hebrew)and he is very pleased with himself when he recites, and his freckled face is concentrated and so cute. So we too must gather a little more patience and wait for the abundance of summer fruits, so that they will come to us at their appointed time, and in a good time, to give us exactly what our bodies will need then. And in the meantime we will nourish ourselves from what nature has to offer us now, because it is exactly what we need.
To health!
Yours,
Maggie and the garden team
Organic vegetable baskets (draft only):
Leeks
celery
Kale
onions
Light Zucchinis
lettuce
Tomatoes
Cucumbers
Potatoes
Carrots
parsley
In the large organic vegetable baskets, also:
Rocket
Swiss Chard
Beets
coriander
Organic fruit baskets:
Bananas
Oranges
Papaya
In the large organic fruit baskets, also:
Strawberries
Bananas
Oranges
