Hello,
Leroy and I both work quite a lot in
the garden and much of the result goes to other people. Generally I am quite
fine with that as that garden is for all. But I realized that my altruistic
feelings do not spread very far beyond the neighborhood. Our neighborhood has
over a 1000 living spaces in it that get the newsletter. This garden serves a
large area. Overall not so many in the neighborhood take advantage of the
garden in either the sense of produce or contribute work.
Yesterday when I came to the garden I saw
the closest neighbor talking to a couple. I went right to work looking for my
arch enemies, the squash bugs. While there I heard this neighbor tell the
woman, “Here is a bag. You can pick as many tomatoes as you want as many of
them go to waste.”
I felt a bit ticked because every day
that I attack these bugs I pick ripe produce of one kind or another. I have not
left many tomatoes to rot. Once in a while one gets missed, but not often. When
the woman got closer to me, I greeted her and asked if she was from the
neighborhood. She replied with her almost full bag, “No, but I am from Cedar
Rapids and he, pointing at the neighbor, is my relative. I went to the farmer’s
market this morning and bought tomatoes to freeze.”
Selfish me, all I could think was I am
not doing all this work for the entire city. Since that moment, I have been
praying about my lack of generosity, but it is a struggle.
On the positive side, Leroy has
managed to change his nursing home service schedule so there is only one left
on Sunday. His weekends will be free except when he needs to help with worship
in the church. How nice is that? We are looking forward to some time off
together.
Paula
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