And so, this means that, a week before the holiday, I have just now gotten around to putting together a new product for The Inadvertent Gardener Shop (which, if you visit it, says I still live in Iowa…I am aware of and am trying to fix this problem…). It’s the 2009 calendar, featuring, this year, 12 of my favorite photos from the Slow Food Nation Victory Garden, all taken during my various volunteer shifts this summer.

For a girl who loves her vegetables and herbs, you’ll notice a mighty high percentage of flower pictures in the mix, but so be it. That’s where the bees and moths and other interesting wildlife seemed to be hanging out.

And, especially for those who love February, there’s a very special image to get you in the mood for Valentine’s Day.

So…consider purchasing one for your favorite garden lover, or bee lover, or ladybug lover. Through 11:59 p.m. EST today, CaféPress is offering a free shipping upgrade on all orders shipped Standard to U.S. addresses, so you can even get speedy delivery for a quite-reasonable price.

And if you’re one of those people who like to wait until after Christmas to see if someone gives you a calendar, that’s fine, too. The calendar will remain in the shop until the point in 2009 when I remember to remove it. My guess (based on when I actually added it)? That’ll be sometime in August.

None Found

As a result, I didn’t get back to the garden until Saturday night, when I was walking through Civic Center to get from my bus stop to BART. I was heading home from spending the day in Golden Gate Park at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, and while I knew that San Francisco’s LoveFest was underway that day, I had not really clued in to what it entailed.

But as I disembarked from the bus, the pounding of drums and thick layer of bass made it clear: LoveFest was still going on. And what it was, by that point in the night at least, was a solid ring of 18-wheeler-based floats around the edge of Civic Center Plaza, each one pumping out music so loud I felt it up through the ground and into my shoes. People danced in every available space, and there were costumes like I could not believe, even though I had, in fact, ridden BART in earlier that day with a guy wearing a one-piece head-to-toe hot pink unitard and carrying a unicycle.

People, this is LoveFest. It is all about building community through odd fashion choices and killer music. Do not judge.

As I wandered through the crowd soaking up the atmosphere and wishing I did not have an immense backpack full of difficult-to-dance-with bluegrass festival supplies on my back, I noticed the giant fence that had been around the Victory Garden when it was first installed was back up. It occurred to me that this was a good idea, because it appeared that Love Fest was all about freedom of expression, and I could imagine someone expressing themselves right into the middle of one of the perfectly manicured beds.

I stood there for a moment, looking at how much the garden had grown in the month since I’d last seen it, when I realized I was next to a guy in an red security services jacket. Since the rest of the Love Fest security patrol seemed to be wearing yellow jackets, I leaned over and shouted in his ear, “Are you the security guard for the Victory Garden?”

He smiled broadly and nodded.

“How’s it going?” I yelled.

He shrugged, and yelled back, “They’re leaving it alone.”

“This must be a more interesting night for you than usual, huh?” I yelled.

He nodded.

“Do you mind if I take your picture?”

He shook his head. Really, there was no point to yelling any further, after all.

I took his picture, thanked him for doing what has to be, on most nights, one of the most boring jobs in America (guarding…a garden…really?), and headed off into the crowd, satisfied the garden was in good hands. And that the plants were, um, well-entertained, even just for one night.

• The lettuce is not plastic
• A lack of authority on this matter
• Know thy own garden
• A different kind of weeding
• Going to BlogHer 2008?

It should be noted that the lettuce bed in the Victory Garden is like no lettuce bed that I, or you, will ever grow. Perfectly aligned lettuce in complementary colors, all manner of heirloom varieties, arranged in concentric circles that look, well, plasticine.

I’m guessing the lettuce loves the fog that soars over City Hall and swoops down on the Victory Garden. It can’t possibly love the days when the sky goes cerulean and the sun beats down, but hey, it’s San Francisco, so the lettuce, like everyone else, gets the full range of “summer” weather. And, apparently, thrives.

“They look like you could just pour salad dressing over them and eat them,” said Robert, one of the other volunteers, to the kid in question.

The kid nodded, his eyes wide, amazed at the salad bar arrayed in front of him.

• Blackberry-ginger-sage vinaigrette
• Lettuce crater
• Pear salad with honey-cranberry drizzle
• Green explosion
• Colorful! Crisp!

Kurt Michael Friese, author of A Cook’s Journey: Slow Food In The Heartland, has been riding the train across the Plains and the Rockies, taking a paced route toward San Francisco. The vegetables and herbs in the Victory Garden have been stretching toward the sunlight – when sunlight pierces the fog, that is.

Starting Thursday, Slow Food Nation comes to San Francisco, and I’m ready to savor it.

Tomorrow night, starting at 5 p.m. at the Victory Garden in Civic Center, Slow Food Nation will launch a petition calling for New Vision for a 21st Century Food, Farm & Agriculture Policy. The Vision Statement will be a call to action to frame future food and agricultural policies to benefit all Americans. I can’t make it because of work commitments, but if you go, keep an eye out for The Mint Killer, who has been one of the architects of this statement.

Throughout the weekend, there are workshops, all manner of good food and drink to snack and sip on, Slow Food Rocks (New Pornographers and Ozomatli and Gnarls Barkley in the house on Saturday, folks!) on Saturday and Sunday at The Great Meadow at Fort Mason, and even some Slow Journeys around the region to check out local producers and their environs. Not sure where to start? Chow has paired with Slow Food Nation to develop some terrific itineraries for audiences including oenophiles, couples on a date and the budget-minded.

I’m going to check out the Taste Pavilions, and I’ll be pulling a volunteer shift at the Victory Garden on Sunday morning from 9 to noon, so if you’re in the vicinity, stop by and say hello. I’ll also be attending what might possibly be the most perfect class ever on Sunday afternoon: a tasting session that features heirloom tomatoes paired with local wines. Tomatoes plus wine? I could die and go to heaven, but I’d prefer that happen after Sunday, because it can’t be quite as exciting.

There’s one more reason I’m excited about this weekend, and that’s a new piece of equipment in my own personal arsenal. For awhile now, I’ve been craving a solid DSLR camera, and feeling like I was pushing the limits of what I could do with my trusty Canon PowerShot that has gotten me through more than two years of blogging. Yesterday afternoon, the UPS delivery person dropped off a Canon Rebel XSi, and that’s going to make documenting this event that much more amazing.

Let me stop and think about this for just a minute. Heirloom tomatoes paired with local wines and shot with my new camera? It’s going to be quite a weekend.

• Slow Food Nation: The preliminary report
• The lettuce is not plastic
• Victory! Or, I found a garden (for the time being)
• Slow-roasted tomato dip
• Tomorrow, declare your Food Independence

Ladybugs and I have a troubled history: I used to try to catch them as a kid, and it seemed like more often than not they’d poop on my hand or fly away almost immediately. So I’ve learned, through experience, to just watch. Let the ladybugs do their own thing.

Which, as it turns out, they were.

Over on a leaf near the edge of the garden, I noticed a bright red, misshapen dot, so moved closer to get a better look. And then, I had to avert my eyes.

Before me? Hot, hot ladybug-on-ladybug action. Right there in the Victory Garden.

I probably should have given them their privacy, but instead I did what any self-respecting documentarian would do. I took pictures. I even tried to get some video, but my ladybug skin flick came out too blurry for prime time.

Eventually I left them to their own devices and headed back toward the stage end of the garden, where Kelsey, the Garden Educator on duty, was talking to a visitor. I waited, discreetly, until the visitor had wandered off amidst the vegetables, and said, “I just saw some ladybug sex over there in the sunflower bed.”

“Were they eating the aphids, too?” Kelsey asked.

“They were a little too busy,” I said.

“This is very, very good,” he said. “The more ladybugs, the better for the plants.”

“And the more entertaining for the garden visitors,” I said.

“Maybe we need some ladybug Viagra,” he said.

• Go for the green
• Repot at your own risk
• Singing for one’s locally-grown supper
• Ain’t it heavy
• Long live the aristocrat

On Saturday, August 16, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Victory Garden, there will be a Community Day and Sustainability Resource Fair. I also have on good authority that there will also be a group celebrating Pakistani Independence Day, but that is independent of this particular event.

Regardless, it’s going to be a wild and wacky day at the garden, so why not come down and join the party? I’ll be there all day, helping guide you through the World Famous Victory Garden.

• Tips on eating more cheaply in 2009
• Celebrating BlogDay 2006
• Victory! Or, I found a garden (for the time being)
• Oakland Community Farmer’s Market to reopen Saturday
• Not a member of the society of snow lovers

I dismissed this behavior as a figment of my imagination, and turned my attention back to the lecture at hand.

A few minutes later, a man in a black leather jacket strode forcefully past the garden, heading toward UN Plaza.

“Want me to come plant some weed?” he yelled.

None of us were quite clear about what he said at first, so I yelled back, “What did you say?” I can hear the collective groan of anyone and everyone who has told me not to engage crazy people in the street. But I cannot help it. I simply have to be polite.

“Some weed!” he yelled back, never breaking stride. “I’ll come in there and plant some weed. It’s a community garden, right?”

“I guess that’s why they have 24-hour guards,” Lauren said.

“Oh my gosh,” I said. “I never thought of THAT kind of vandalism. That’s kind of subversive and brilliant.”

“I think that guy’s having his own kind of day,” said the man who we’d been talking to. Lauren and I turned, and I realized that the prospective weed planter was the same guy who had been slapping the statue down at the other end of the garden. There he was, his arms wrapped around the narrower sibling to the first statue, lifting his body up so his legs stuck out horizontal to the ground. Then he dismounted the second statue and strode toward the street.

“I think,” said the grocery store lecturer, “that’s what happens when you start your day with a breakfast of vodka.”

“Or weed,” I said.

• The most noxious weed of all
• Hot, hot ladybug action
• First day at the Victory Garden
• A little fear of change
• Where it’s at: June 24

Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

• Green Thumb Sunday: Where my garden was
• Green Thumb Sunday: State Fair children’s garden
• Green Thumb Sunday: Fire in the garden
• Green Thumb Sunday: Not your average garden ornament
• Green Thumb Sunday: My last look at the Iowa garden

Tomatoes in the Victory Garden

Bed 10A. That’s the location, on the official Victory Garden Map, of the tomato plants. During my first morning as a volunteer, I kept wandering over there, checking out the tiny yellow blossoms, eyeing the green tomatoes weighing down the branches, and admiring the basil and Italian parsley companion-planted throughout the bed.

Then I noticed suckers growing from the stem junctures on some of the tomato plants, and reached down to pick one. Even in the chilly mist, there was no mistaking the smell that wafted up. That green, tomato-plant smell that I love so much? Turns out it’s just as good even when the garden isn’t really yours and you aren’t even going to get to eat any of the tomatoes.

I’m already looking forward to Saturday, when I might just stand by Bed 10A for as much of the day as the Garden Educator on duty will let me. I don’t think I’m quite ready to talk to the plants, but I’m definitely going to be looking for suckers to pluck.

Heck. If no one’s looking, I might just have to hug one of the plants. Trust me. In that neighborhood? That kind of behavior wouldn’t even come close to making me stand out in the crowd.

• Tomato plants should not be yellow
• Tomato lust
• Are we there yet?
• Where it’s at: July 22
• The unscented tomato seedlings of Home Depot

Two hours into my first stint as a docent in the Victory Garden, I was simultaneously applauding my decision to actually grab my favorite grey hoodie and kicking myself for not grabbing my fleece jacket to go over it.

“I’m freezing,” I muttered to Lauren, who was volunteering with me that day. “I cannot believe I almost didn’t bring my hoodie.”

Lauren shook her head and zipped her fleece (while I stifled inadvertent envy) up a little further. We both eyed the cloud-thick sky. I wrinkled my nose at the mist. It felt like early spring in Iowa, not even close to what I consider summer.

Regardless of weather-related challenges (Note: bring many more layers this weekend…), this was a fairly low-key volunteer effort. I spent much of my time wandering around the garden taking pictures, and having conversations with the English-speaking visitors. As much as I like opera, I was of no help with the busload of Italian tourists who came through about 45 minutes into the morning, and even though I live in Oakland’s Chinatown, I wasn’t any help with the Chinese tourists, either.

At one point, the Garden Educator on site to keep us on task asked me to help her water some plants. I said I would, but then a woman walking by stopped at the fence around the garden to ask if there was a need for more volunteers, and so I wrote down the volunteer coordinator’s email address for her and talked to her for a few minutes about the garden, and by the time I turned back around, another volunteer had picked up the watering can and had taken over that job.

Dirty hands? Not really. But I can’t complain about spending a few hours wandering aimlessly through a pretty spectacular garden.

• A different kind of weeding
• The tomato bed
• The demise of the hoodie
• Victory! Or, I found a garden (for the time being)
• Proof of responsibility