Lettuce, Basket, Happen

(Inspired by a prompt to use nine words -- lettuce, basket, happen, winter, sister, monster, supper, subject, and puppet -- in a story. I thought I'd try shorts themed around each one of these. Only made it through three before drifting off to sleep.)

Lettuce
For years, it used to be defined as a head, a head with a rigid core. To eat it, the core needed to be broken. To break the core, you seized the head on the top and banged it repeatedly on a chopping board or kitchen counter. Then, when the core had snapped, the most tender leaves around it were released, and you were good to go.
We stopped eating lettuce when we learned that it had less nutritional value than water. And then we discovered romaine, leafy greens and leafy reds, mesclun, spicy greens, arugula, and sprouts. Now, we struggle to plant the greens to create nightly salads. But the tender leaves lack a core, and without it, seem never quite able in our soil to stand up.

Happen
What would happen if you tried to grow all of the fruits and vegetables you ate? Would the local grocery go out of business? Would Wal-Mart be shamed into paying employees what their worth? Would big box retailers control our lives or would we control theirs?
There are myths about soil -- that it is infertile, toxic, incapable of supporting the seed life necessary to produce food.
I wonder if those myths are figments of the imagination, or the product of the vast right wing conspiracy -- remember that?
When we bought our home, it came with three acres, a barn, a milk shed, and a chicken coop. And a dirt-bike track.
You'll need to invest some significant money if you hope to have a garden, we were told. You'll need a landscaper to come in and make some serious re-adjustments to the soil.
A previous owner told us he had never been able to do a garden. All the pesticides and fertilizers in the world couldn't help.
We stopped mowing the lawn, and we planted thing, using natural fertilizers and no pesticides. Within weeks, we had food. Tonight is May 22. The carrots, green beans, and garlic from last year met arugula and tatsoi of this year in a savory stir fry. It all came from the land. Our land.

Basket
I miss the hand-woven basket. The baskets that I encounter today are plastic. Durable, cheap, and functional. For laundry, for freshly harvested garlic bulbs, for garden tools, eggs, salad spinning, more. As children, we wove baskets all the time. I still remember putting together the basic frame and gathering the materials to do the in-out motion. At some point in childhood, the weaving stopped. Today, it seems to be a lost art.