Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Winter Wednesday - Italian Spring

Today is a combined Winter Wednesday and Sustainable Saturday post.

This Saturday I will be participating in the 15 Day Winter Author Blog Challenge.  If you have ever written a book, tried to write a book, have ever thought about writing a book, or just like to hang out in cyberspace with authors, I invite you to join our fun group.  The Challenge starts on Friday.  My next Sustainable Saturday post will be on Saturday, March 16.

Last Saturday, spouse and I went to the local Christmas Tree Shop, which is a place where you can find bargains, and - the unexpected.  It is the kind of store (and no, I am not being paid for this plug) where you walk in intending to buy one thing and come out wondering (in a good way) how you ever spent $40.

There was a display of seeds, and to our delight, they were Italian seeds.  Not seeds of Italian type veggies, but - Italian veggies from Italy.  Barely a word of English on the labels

Some of the veggies were familiar - carrots, cippolini onions,  fava beans. (not my favorite, but spouse likes them). Others were new to my gardening experience. I had never seen caper seed sold in a store. Spouse uses capers in his cooking, and I also enjoy them.

Dreaming of an unusual garden, spouse bought three packets: an unusual broccoli (Spigarello broccoli), an Italian lungo cucumber, and mixed leaf lettuces.

Our bill, by the way, including the seeds (each packet was under $2.00 - not bad, nowadays) and our other purchases, was $37.  I think the one item we intended to purchase was about $4.00.  Now, that's merchandising.

We've been gardening for some 40 years, but every spring is a new experience.  Wish us luck with our Italian seeds!

6 comments:

  1. I love seeds. I used to do a vegetable garden - but now it's just flowers - lovely post!

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  2. Caper seeds!!? Any chance that I could pay you to mail me a packet? Then we could test how they grow in E.Texas heat & humidity!! (Betcha I can find a recipe for pickling capers...)

    What fun! Hope that your Italian specialties do well for y'all this summer.

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  3. Love gardening - we try to be as organic as possible and grow a lot of our own food too here in Australia. I only wish I had as much success as my Mum used to - we always had many different types of fruit trees (orange, apricot, nectarine, peach, fig, white and red grapes, lemon etc) and all sorts of veggies growing up! I was lucky!

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  4. Hi,

    First, I love gardening - flowers, vegetables, etc. Second, I am an aspiring author. Would consider joining this challenge if I knew more about it.

    Nice post; short and sweet. Thanks for sharing.

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  5. How wonderful I wish you lots of luck with those Italian seeds. I can't garden at all but I do like the end result of gardening. Have fun.

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  6. I have never seen seeds packages in the US that appear to have been packaged for foreign sale. I wonder how they got them.... It makes me think of those forms you fill out when you re-enter the country assuring immigration that you are not carrying any seeds from abroad.... Anyway, I would certainly buy some too given the op.

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