MI Woman Faces Jury Trial for Growing Organic Vegetables

Julie Bass lives in Oak Park, MI, which is about a 25-minute drive north of Dearborn, where you could face a jury trial for attempting to hand a Christian pamphlet to a Muslim, even if you are an Arab, or videotaping a friend distributing Christian pamphlets, even if the pamphlets are printed in Arabic.

Ms. Bass's "crime" is not nearly so un-PC, but she did plant an unauthorized organic vegetable garden in her own front yard, offending some anonymous person in the neighborhood. (Hat tip: theblogprof)

My advice to Julie: plant tons of marigolds on the parameters of those beautiful, weed-free beds to keep out the bugs and color-coordinate with the effusively showy squash blossoms you'll be having soon. Toss in some seeds of beautiful, colorful, edible nasturtium flowers and maybe some bright and cheerful--and also edible--calendula flowers. Lovely in a salad.

Voila! "Suitable" plant material that garden designers tell you will make the color of your "ornamental" peppers "pop."

My special favorites are the sky-blue, cucumber-scented flowers of super-easy-to-grow borage, an herb that the ancient Greeks thought "maketh a person merry and joyful."

I can't disagree.

I freeze them in ice cubes to float in cool summer drinks just for fun, but Julie might offer nibbles of borage to Oak Park officials when they come to ticket her, summon her to court, fine her, haul her off to jail, or whatever the government officials of Oak Park consider a "suitable" punishment for growing vegetables in one's front yard. After all, Dioscorides, the first century Greek physician, recommended borage to "quiet the lunatic person."



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