gardening. gleaning. generosity.

I'm feeling very alliterative today.

I'm also feeling like I finally have time to get back to blogging. It's been a crazy couple of weeks: getting the house on the market, showings, a baby boy who is eating like a teenager and starting to teethe...

No excuses, though. I've got some ideas lined up. Here's a little preview of the coming attractions:
- Perogi: Eastern European comfort food
- Cooking class with Suzy
- Retrospective: Mustards in Napa Valley

In the midst of our busyness, I ran into an acquaintance from divinity school who now lives in Greenville. She told me she volunteers with an organization called Generous Garden. The group has a 2.5 acre garden in which they grow fresh produce for local shelters and food banks. They, too, have a blog - Garden Talk. Unfortunately, it's not updated very often (I know, I know...pot and kettle). But the group sounds great, and I'd like to check out the garden sometime.

I've also been getting a ton of emails from a national gleaning organization called the Society of Saint Andrew. I had originally gotten in touch with the local group to hopefully glean as part of our culinary care Lenten experiment. We weren't able to, but now I get emails when gleaning opportunities come up... like when unseasonably warm weather makes strawberries come in early, before the farmers are prepared to harvest them and they need to be picked before they rot in the fields. You can volunteer whenever a convenient opportunity comes along...and I hope we will.

It really amazes me that in our world of fast-food meals, canned-anything, preservatives in everything, there are still groups that help to relieve hunger by gardening and gleaning - by growing fresh fruits and vegetables, and by picking produce that would otherwise spoil before any ever had a chance to eat it. It is perhaps the best stewardship we can practice: to cultivate what we can and share it with others, and to make sure that what God grows does not go to waste.