I stopped by my usual grocer on the way home last night, to pick up some bits for the dinner meal and a couple staples of which we were a little short, and I noticed the normally over-abundant fruit and vegetable section was looking a little weak.

Admittedly, I'm a "have," and am used to "everything all the time," as the Eagles put it. I shop at the local hoity-toity (some say) Byerly's nearest my house. Sure, there's a couple "less expensive" grocers like Cub Foods and the new grocery aisles at the Super Target that are not too much farther. I like the selection and extras Byerly's offers, and the prices aren't really different for the every-day off-the-shelf items, and it is the closest grocer to my house.

Nonetheless, as I went through the veggies, I noticed the asparagus looked rather wimpy; plenty of it, but its all bunches of small stalks. I also noticed the usually abundant selection of apples and pears has waned to just one or two types of each, and that none of the oranges were very large (or very orange). There were no Brussels sprouts, and they were out of bags of spinach again (I didn't need any, but I did notice).

It is the deepest part of winter, so I supposed that pickings are just slim. Could also have been that the produce was being restocked, and I just got there when they were clearing stuff out.

Living in Minnesota has its downfall, in that if there weren't bushels of this stuff brought in on trucks, we'd have to stock up in October enough to last until plants started producing again in May or June. There are deer, raccoon, rabbit, squirrel, and (hopefully) fish about, but probably not enough to feed everyone.

I know I'm not prepared for it. There's a lot of stuff in my cupboard that I pass over when looking for a meal; not that tonight, maybe that later...that kind of thing. In a pinch, though, it's all edible and if it were all we had, it'd all get eaten. When the zombies attack, or we decide to overthrow our government and they respond by cutting off our services, I don't think we've got a couple weeks worth of stuff, even if we gave up on variety or combinations and rationed to just a few hundred calories a day.

It's a lucky time to have grocery stores nearby. Heck, I suspect some 90-percent of us would drop right off if we were left to our own for sustenance (not to mention other necessities). Never mind any anarchy that would happen, and the atrocities that go with that, but even if we were Sims-like polite until the end, how many of us have even a flowerpot with herbs in it? I suspect only my one neighbor, with his backyard garden stands a chance.