A beautiful Indian summer day. Generous, neighborly friends. Digging and watering. Our garden is taking shape thanks to many people, some of whom I haven’t even met – yet. Thank you, friends.
We are entering into our 3rd week of school and now that the “back to school” social excitement has pretty much run its course, it is interesting to see students in class turning towards getting down to real work. The biggest barriers many of them have are often around trust – trusting one’s self most of all, especially when you are doing something you’ve never done before.
I know how that feels when I’m in the garden. I’ve planted plants, but never seriously helped grow food before. I’m not sure what the final results will look like, and there are many influences that I can’t foresee and that I don’t have any control over. Toto, I don’t think we’re in my familiar kitchen environment anymore.
Trust aside, I am also realizing that once you get started, growing food has a magnetism – you want to see how those plants are doing, which on this weekend, feels much like that wonderful feeling my great grandmother used to describe when you know there is a good book waiting for you at the end of the day. Now I want to visit the garden to see what is waiting there too. How lucky we are to have this luxurious chance to learn in this way, with a safety net of great farmers not far from us should our yield fall short.
Meanwhile, our class will be getting our teamwork and cooking skills together so that when this garden is producing, we will have a rare chance to harvest, cook and serve this delicious fare to ourselves and perhaps also to our Long Table Dinner guests… in about 8 weeks, I trust.
