Harvest of Plenty.

The community garden hosted an open house tonight, for neighbors, the Park Board (which approves our lease), participants and passersby. The Restorative Justice crew -- involved with an alternative dispute resolution program that draws teens both serving community service, and those helping administer the justice -- grilled zuccini with oregano. I brought some fresh-picked broccolini and dip.

The ex-Mennonite family has moved off to Kentucky, but their purple, green, and purple-and-green-striped pole beans were still around to sample. Someone made pesto...

I like being involved. I like the people who garden, share their info and stories. We even had a bear visiting this summer, treed itself down the street. (This is the residential garden, not the church one on the edge of the cornfield.) The fellow who helped get it organized last year -- the community one -- is a Baha'i. I think he was most interested in keeping these plots organic -- no fertilizer -- whereas the farm field plots are not.

But... I think too, he wasn't interested in participating in the church garden and preferred the secular. I wondered myself last year when signing up with my phone number and address if I'd be pressured to join their evangelical church. Which wouldn't have bothered me -- you learn as a child opening the door to Jehovah's Witnesses, conversion crews go away quickly when you tell them you're Catholic.

But no pressure: nobody called, nobody mailed. Just the community invite to the Corn Roast end-of-harvest gathering. And meeting some of the nice families in neighboring plots who were members of the church.

Still, it's nice when your city is big enough to offer both.