The partial government shutdown has left the White House garden overrun with weeds, with fewer gardeners to maintain first lady Michelle Obama's pride.
Regular maintenance has stopped on the garden and only periodic watering is being done, a White House official confirmed to CNN. That's consistent with landscaping being performed on all National Park Service areas crippled by the shutdown throughout the country.
The garden, which provides fresh fruit and vegetables to area food banks and helps feed visiting heads of state, has become overgrown. The once pristine 1,500 square-foot plot is now anything but, with ripe crops unpicked and rotting vegetables lying on the ground, according to Eddie Gehman Kohan, the founding editor of Obama Foodorama, a blog dedicated to covering the White House garden.
Read - White House garden overgrown during shutdown
Previously:
Inside the White House garden: a conversation with White House chef Sam Kass
Keeping history alive, one tomato at a time
The First Lady's fall harvest
It was only two weeks at end of season, what the... Weeds overtook my garden too, and I didn't shut down.
Weeds from the Klatsch? Good. 'Bout time someone got the gubmint running.
Weeding is the most sensual thing in the world. You plant yourself in the garden with the intention of flushing out the impurities within your own spiritual roots, so that you can begin to feel all of the joy that God and Nature wants you to feel. Better yet weed the garden with someone you love and embrace them afterwards. You will be showered with raindrops of heavenly wisdom encased with heavenly love and mercy for ionizing love throughout your hearts and your gardens. You will become a spiritual gardener.
So, where is Michelle Obama? Should she be weeding? It's her garden anyway.
As Campaign Chairman of the Weed Out Hate Initiative, I call on the President to invite the kids to symbolically weed out hate in the gardens there as well as kids everywhere to weed out hate throughout the world
Since Michelle is such a fan of "Get Moving", I would think that she and the girls would be all over this.
Liberal hypocrisy at its finest.
Jefferson would be appalled at this kind of waste. And why Can't the kids harvest and weed and learn directly from nature?
This piece is important because it emphasizes how her family is eating organic, naturally grown items while her husband gave genetic modifiying giant Monsanto a pass to do anything they want to our food supply and never be prosecuted. It was secretly included into the budget in March.
This may be the most useless article I've ever read. The garden is Michelle Obama's baby; let her and her kids get out there and weed it.
What is the problem with the first lady and the kids weeding and watering the garden? They eat the food out of it. It would be a good lesson to the kids on maintaining an excellent food source
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1500 square feet? And "nobody" can keep it weeded? Really? That's an area equivalent to 50 feet by 30 feet, not even half of a basketball court. It can't possibly be that hard to keep up an area that size – I know, I did it for years.
Sounds like the whole White House garden is primarily for "show", rather than function.
Seems almost typical of the modern elite. A garden for show, but Mrs. Obama can't even spare the time to invite someone over to enjoy the fruits of labor when the time has come. What a waste, and what a comparison that spoiled fruit is to modern politics, what does this teach? Good, healthy food can be wasted and those at the top have no empathy.
Hear, hear Robert Harris and What?!
Not the good kind, I take it.