When I Was Your Age I Walked Ten Miles for a Full Watering Can -Without Shoes

Uh, excuse me, this generation here. Just wanted to quietly mention that, uh, I garden. Yeah, just like you -vegetables and flowers, perennials and annuals, trees and shrubs when possible. I have friends my age who do it too. Yeah, I am that generation. Yup -ipods, email, loves the great indoors. Now, if I have to hear one more old fart bitch about how this generation and that generation aren't going outside and digging in the dirt!

Yeah, we have problems. We don't make enough to buy a house or we rent in cities or apartment complexes. So we have no dirt! But when we do have a house, when we do have rooftops, balconies, or little strips of land that our landlord allows us to use, we garden -and we do it with the same passion and excitement for learning and growing that your generation does. So stop the skeptical whining.

Sick-of-it.

A quote from the New York Times Home & Garden section, in the article "New This Year: Tried and True" by Ann Raver:

"But Mr. Hinkley expressed skepticism about these new gardeners. “I just don’t think there’s another generation moving in,” he said. “The next generation is so into not being outside.”
Mr. Druse agreed. “Texting, blogging, e-mail,” he said. “They keep their iPods in the garden, just in case somebody sends them an e-mail.” He gets e-mail messages from fans who listen to “Real Dirt,” his weekly podcast, while they’re weeding, he said, and he wonders how many will stick it out after the first onslaught of cucumber beetles.
“A lot of people won’t be successful at growing food,” Mr. Druse said. “There are bugs and critters and animals, and you can’t fool around without improving the soil.” "

I suppose we are not tried and true? We, as young ones, watched someone we loved or respected, someone from another generation, garden. That becomes the seed that sprouts when it chances upon soil. My grandparents gardened, my father gardened. As a young person and ever since, as long as I have had soil, gardened and failed and kept on going. There are a lot of young people curious about gardening, composting, green anything. Its time we stood up.