Memorial Day Weekend and the Victory Garden - 5/31/11    I was lucky enough to spend my morning and early afternoon yesterday in three different gardens, growing in two of them and advising in the third. Being in the garden is always a joyous time, even with the summer heat, but it had special resonance on Memorial Day: since early in the last century, if not before, food gardening and local food production has held a special place in American life, a role which is at once both intensely practical and intensely patriotic. Washington Post garden writer Adrian Higgins captured this beautifully in his recent commentary, "The victory garden, still a winning idea."  Mr. Higgins noted, as so many of us do, that "the closer I am to the source of the veggies I eat, the better I feel about myself and the planet."  The article is a clarion call for people to get involved in growing food, stressing that we are already moving toward a time "when we will need victory gardens on every block, in a post-industrial, post-global planet, when advancement is measured in localizing our world, not expanding it."  Brilliant. The only thing Mr. Higgins missed was mentioning that this movement is happening right in his own backyard, with Montgomery Victory Gardens! In addition to growing our own, we will also need to defend the farms that still exist, and hopefully we will do so with all the vigor and determination that the Victory Gardeners of WW II fought their struggle. You have all heard of the dire threat to Nick's Organic Farm, the only organic seed producing farm in Montgomery County.  The next public meeting in this struggle is on Thursday, June 9.  You can read more about it at the new Save Nick's Organic Farm website, as well as find opportunities to volunteer in the campaign. Whether you join us on June 9 (please do!), grow your own food, or participate in any of a myriad number of ways folks are recreating our food system, you are participating in one of the most important, fundamental, and downright patriotic movements of our time.  Don't forget it! For the new food revolution, Gordon Clark, Project Director Montgomery Victory Gardens