“Sometimes since I’ve been in the garden I’ve looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden – in all the places.”
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
”Do you want some romaine lettuce?”
”Your kale is doing well.”
”It doesn’t seem to be a good year for beans.”
I spend another delicious morning in the community garden, weeding, harvesting, and feeding my soul. The weeds have been conquered to the point where I can easily stay on top of them, and I’ll be harvesting produce daily from here on out. Yesterday it was peas, lettuce, salad turnips, green onions, kale, and Swiss chard.
I like to work in solitude, but now and then I also enjoy chatting with other gardeners. We learn from one another and share the bounty when we have an over abundance of something. The community is a gift as is the garden, so it stings when something goes amiss.
I arrive home to an email from the garden coordinator revealing that some spray nozzles—and even hoses—were stolen overnight. Someone stole my own nozzle while we were away and I just purchased a new one on the way home this afternoon. I suppose I’ll have to resort to toting it back and forth when I go to water from now on.
It would be easy to feel jaded—and I do for a time—but the gifts of the garden ground me in gratitude. I prepare a garden salad with her bounty, freeze Swiss chard (officially kicking off the season’s food preservation effort), make garlic scape pesto and kale chips.
It’s a sad truth that we will always cross paths with thieves. Sometimes they steal garden paraphernalia, other times they’re more subtle and try to steal our peace of mind. We choose to stand strong, with intention and gratitude, and shine light and share joy in the face of it all. We come out stronger, and better, and our corner of the world is made brighter as a result.
We give thanks. We see the hand of the Creator move. We are blessed and we, in turn, bless. This is how we change our world.
Soli Deo gloria.
It annoys me that people would choose to steal (at all) but especially so at a community garden…I mean that place is for everybody! I am sorry about that. Stand strong.