Walking around Kroger today, I took a minute to realize just how cool it is that I can buy mangos in February. Not to mention oranges, limes, lemons, bananas, and peaches. It got me to thinking that, before supermarkets, people were pretty limited in their choices of fresh fruits and veggies. If something wasn't in season, you were pretty much out of luck. If something couldn't be grown in your climate, you would probably never taste it.

Unless, of course, you were rich. The rich could afford to build hothouses, in which all manner of warm-weather fruit, vegetables, and flowers could be grown in all seasons.

General Tilney, of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, is rich enough to afford this luxury. Catherine Morland describes the hothouses at Northanger Abbey as "a village." Take the following quote:

"Though careless enough in most manners of eating, he loved good fruit - or if he did not, his friends and children did. There were great vexations, however, attending a garden such as his. The utmost care could not always secure the most valuable fruits. The pinery had yielded only one hundred in the last year."