Michelle Obama In Paradise

The First Lady is digging and planting a garden, and good for her. I hope they get some great produce from it and are able to eat for many a day through their efforts, maybe laying in some supplies afterward for the next long winter. They can go down to the White House beet cellar and get another can of green beans and have enough to make it through to spring.

Gardens are great. I should get out and till the soil and put in some tomatoes (at least). I might just do it. Don't think I won't. I could.

I needed to look up something about "paradise" a while ago, actually trying to verify that my spelling of "paradisaical" was correct [It was, but do you think I could do it again here? Took me four false starts. It's one of those words you can't think of too much before spelling it.] Getting to an online dictionary site, I see that paradise is a word with an involved etymological history.

It seems that in the old Iranian language Avestan they had a noun (pairidaeza) that literally meant "a wall enclosing a garden or orchard." It was the wall. The site goes on to say: "Zoroastrian religion encouraged maintaining arbors, orchards, and gardens, and even the kings of austere Sparta were edified by seeing the Great King of Persia planting and maintaining his own trees in his own garden." Then Xenophon, hanging out with the Persians, wrote in his histories about their paradeisos, not referring to the walls but to their parks and orchards. Later this word was used in the Greek translation of Genesis to refer to the Garden of Eden, then passed on in English.

But please, Michelle, keep the Republicans far away from your garden. The last time we got a snake anywhere near Paradise ... well, we haven't heard the end of it yet.