January 12, 2021

by drplasticpicker

It wasn’t enough to make an entire dish, but I grew it. I grew it all myself. The shallots were from the store but I saved the ends and just stuck them in some water. I chopped them up, and put the bulbs in my container garden. The radishes and beet greens I planted from seed in my container garden. I did it myself. I sold our Honda Odyssey Minivan https://drplasticpicker.com/the-road-to-fise-let-it-go-the-2006-honda-minivan/, turned our backyard concrete parking pad into a minicontainer garden. This took learning how to sell the Minivan myself and filling out the DMV paperwork. Then after selling the minivan, taking multiple trips with Mr. Plastic Picker to Home Depot to buy the containers and soil. I had to clean the entire area. I moved an old outside rug that had been upstairs on the roofdeck for over a year, and very dusty. I vaccumed the rug and carried the heavy thing downstairs myself. Then I moved the patio furniture around, and a chair over to my mini-container garden area. Suddenly a small wicker end table appeared, my mother-in-law brought it out from their stash. I bought seed packets of radishes and beet greens. I bought them because I want to start eating them more, and I read that they are almost impossible to mess up. And then I started gardening. It’s been a multi-month process. The parsley I tried got riddled with these unknown bugs and I have no idea what they are. But finally, yesterday – it was time to harvest.

It’s so important to plant things. I need to set a good example. I was standing at the local taco shop across from our clinic, and Dr. Dear Friend and Dr. MM and I were buying lunch. Then Jupiter Ascending was playing on the screen. That movie is a closet vampire movie about this god-awful sci-fi fantasy about people harvesting souls. It’s horrible and now a cult classic. I want to be a creator of life and I don’t want to live forever young. I am happy being middle-aged and wise (but with lucious hair from my new HiBar shampoo bar!). So I am trying to plant a garden myself for my children and myself, and to set a good example for my patients and the world. I honestly didn’t know if I could do it. Succulents that people have gifted to me in the past have died in my office.

But I’m a different person now. I grew radishes and beet greens!!! I regrew onions because I’m trying to save the world and our collective health. So yesterday was an important day for me.

And that is it. I know it sounds silly, but yesterday was a really important day for me. I still have lots of beet greens outside and over the next few days I’m going to have my children harvest them and we’ll eat them together. I’ve never eaten beet greens before and realize now they are so delicious and healthy. I’ve never really appreciated radishes before as well. My very small radishes were crispy, slightly spicy and fresh. They were crunchy and so wonderful. My kids who aren’t particularly picky, ate the stirfry I made including three vegetables we did not routinely eat before. Opa squash, beet greens, radish greens and the radish itself. I’m being interviewed today by an important gruop for an important news article. But honestly, it’s all related. It’s related because I am only being interviewed by them for my climate work because this has been a journey for me. A journey I’ve decided to share with the world because we can save this earth together. If me, Dr. Plastic Picker me, can grow beet greens and radishes and feed my family. Anyone can do it. We can reclaim this earth and reclaim our planet and future, if only we shut out all the consumerist noise and concentrate on the people and the environment around us.