Local Love

ot long after the restaurant shutdown began in mid-March, a deeply committed locavore friend of mine made a crack over the phone about “people who have ‘Eat Local’ stickers on their bumpers while Amazon trucks pull up to their houses four times a day.” I laughed and was glad I didn’t have an Eat Local sticker. I am both an avid gardener and a heavy Amazon user and was, at the time, shopping for wildflower seeds from a Vermont-based company whose globally sourced flowers would boost the local population of honeybees. Over two previous seasons, my plots of mountain phlox and sweet alyssum had been defeated by invasive bindweed and thistle, plants pleasing enough to the bees but not as much to me. Those mangy, sad weed patches were vexing