WeDrinkInspiration Story Prompt – Back Then – Haibun

(c) Jen Rosenberry – All rights reserved

Back Then – Haibun

The house is abandoned, it has been for at least 50 years.  Out back, there is an old abandoned greenhouse, now just some metal hoops and a door.  Grandpa told me about greenhouses and  I could just imagine that it was full of plants or flowers, blooming in the middle of a harsh snow-swept winter.  Now, it is just another relic of man’s power to transform everything to his own needs, including the seasons.

Grandpa told me that in those days, people could actually eat strawberries and tomatoes in the middle of winter.  Food back then wasn’t related to the seasons like it is now.  Back then, food was something you lived for, something you got excited about.

In order to make tomato plants hardier in the winter I was told that scientists actually mixed tobacco DNA with the tomato seeds.  They were always fooling around with plants like that.  It’s been said that tomatoes were huge and strawberries too.  Grandpa also said that at one point, you couldn’t plant anything from the seeds that were produced by the plants that farmers grew, you always had to buy new seeds.  Sure must have been a strange world back then.

transforming our world
into a sterile desert
substituting nature

Written for We Drink Because We’re Poets Saturday Story Prompt #2 – From a Photo