Abundance

Poodle Doc and I have both been reading Barbara Kingsolver's new book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. In fact, he bought it for me for my birthday. We keep comparing notes, and we're both a little obsessed with this idea of eating locally. So last Sunday after Meeting, when I casually mentioned that I really wanted to can tomatoes, he immediately offered up his share of tomatoes from the community garden of which he is a member.

After work today, Poodle Doc, Mr. Ether, and I drove out to his garden about half an hour out of town. We braved the mosquitoes -- oh my God, they were fierce, but my Repel Lemon Eucalyptus goop seemed to really work. (I was a little concerned that any marauding koalas might catch wind of us, and then we'd really be sorry, but they must have all been sleeping.) We harvested 5 bushels of tomatoes, plus a variety of both sweet and hot peppers, leeks, basil, eggplants, and a couple of tardy watermelons and cukes. Poodle Doc also generously gave us a portion of his onions and garlic for the year. It is truly an astounding amount of food.

Now comes the part that is both wonderful and difficult -- figuring out how to deal with it all. Making the time to make up a big batch of baba ganouj, roasting the peppers, making salsa ...

Yesterday Quaker Dave asked what each of us will do to end the current wars and prevent the next one. My answer was, "Can tomatoes." What I meant is, we need to do the protesting and the activism, but we also need to remember to find joy, to build our communities, to hold a vision of what we want the world to be and to work toward that. That's what I am doing as I celebrate this amazing abundance.