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.

day thirty-two: fertilizer

*Warning: This post contains adult language. Reader discretion is advised.


"Mary, Mary, quite contrary: How does your garden grow?"

One thing's for sure: It's not with silver bells and cockle shells. You've got to fertilize.

Today Suzy took mushroom compost to the organic garden at Travelers Rest High School (her alma mater, and also where my cousin Kevin goes to school...Go Devildogs!). Suzy walked into the school office and told them she had something for Ms. Chance, the teacher who oversees the garden. The lady at the front desk said to leave the bag with her, so Suzy plopped this bag o' compost on the desk...

...which sucks for the lady at the desk, because this stuff reeks. It smells like crap (which makes sense, since its compost). But that's the best kind of fertilizer. New life grows from that which is dead.

When I went under the bridge on day twenty-one, Tom (who works at the Rescue Mission) struck up a conversation with Adam, one of the addicts we met, and invited him to come to the mission to get some help. Adam said, "I can't go there. Too many rules, too many people telling you what to do. I don't wanna deal with all that bullshit."

I wondered how Tom would respond. But he calmly said right back, "Yeah, but bullshit is the best fertilizer. You ever grow tomatoes?"

"Yeah."

"Well to get good tomatoes you gotta put up with some bullshit to get 'em to grow. It's kinda like with us. God can even use the bullshit in our lives and get us to grow and be healthy."

I just noticed that there's a tomato on the package. Nice coincidence.

Tom went on to talk more with Adam, but I don't remember the rest. I was floored. I'd never heard someone preach with profanity (although I have fantasized about doing it myself, just never had the courage). But it was one of the best sermons I'd ever heard. New life grows from that which is dead.

I know some might think it would be blasphemous to talk about God and minister to others using profanity. But that's fertilizer.