Lessons From The Garden
By Jean Golicz
Posted on
In October of 2012, I wrote an essay as part of the Master Gardener application process. In that composition, I referenced Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I had read her book the previous summer and became interested in sustainable and local agriculture. As a result of that interest, I decided to enroll in the Master Gardener program. To fulfill the volunteer requirement for the MG certificate, I chose to help at the Common Good garden and at Mercy By The Sea. I eventually concentrated my efforts at the Center because they desperately needed volunteers.
Now, five years later, there is a Master Gardener team of 15 volunteers working year round at the Center. Just last week, I spotted the last of the tomatoes before our resident ground hog devoured them. I have come to appreciate how difficult it is to procure one's own food, unless of course you are fortunate enough to be a groundhog sheltered by the Sisters of Mercy.
While on my knees in the garden, I pondered the following:
The futility of harvesting spinach or the deception of over abundance?
The dark voluminous leaves deceptively imply fecundity
This promise quickly evaporates in the heat
A whole row reduced to one simmering pan of nutritional fortitude
And so it is with the allure of abundance
Submit it if you will to the clarifying force of an intense heat
Only to find the value in one tender taste of truth.
The personal truth that I discovered on my knees in the garden is simple....
My grandmother's voice echoes in the background as I labor over the too full plate during another obligatory holiday dinner.....
Waste not, want not.
This Thanksgiving, I am grateful for the meal and for those who labored to produce and prepare it. My prayer is that I might live simply and not be deceived by the allure of abundance. And like the groundhog, I am grateful to the Sisters of Mercy for their thoughtful stewardship of the land and for the lessons learned in their garden.
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