Essay: Reflections on our community garden

I'm not sure how it came about. Someone asked if I would help with a community garden for my church. We wanted to reach out to our neighbors — those who had lost their jobs, had fallen on hard times or were too old to move when the exodus happened.

I've gotten my hands in the dirt before when I was a VISTA Americorps volunteer in Appalachia. My job was to present tobacco farmers with alternatives crops.

We had a large hydroponics tomato operation that might have been profitable if we didn't have to drive hundreds of miles to market. We tried shitake mushrooms, inoculating logs with spores. Lastly we planted three acres of strawberries with help from the local youth brigade.

Then the community got involved.

About 70 families staked out their plots in our 30-acre farm and raised tomatoes, beans (lots of beans) and the sweetest corn I ever tasted. I drove the van that picked up seniors and handicapped and brought them to our farm about 15 miles outside the community. In my spare time I delivered beans to assisted living homes and food banks.

Now I had a different opportunity.

Would an urban garden work on the east side of Flint?

I surveyed the plot, an empty lot that formally held the parsonage. Where the house once stood a bed of landfill brimming with stones was buried beneath a thin layer of grass. A wire fence surrounded the city lot that sided up to our church.

It would make a perfect garden, I imagined.

"If this is going to work you'll have to use raised beds," a master gardener from the congregation said. He put together a garden design before he landed in the hospital having two stents put into his heart.

I used the design along with his advice and volunteers from the church to build six, 40-foot-long raised beds in the front of the lot.

Two grants came through — Keep Genesee County Beautiful and the Community Foundation of Greater Flint. They believe in us too, I mused.

Volunteers from MSU Extension Service rototilled the back plot and along the fence line where asparagus now waves it ferny fingers at the people walking by.

A strawberry patch frames the south side of the garden thanks to donations from a nursery. I chase robins out of the patch. They love to dig up these delicious delicacies. In fact, they have gotten almost half of the patch. Our scarecrow isn't doing his job. I ponder ways to deter these beggars. Perhaps I'll resort to netting the patch.

Planting seeds was tedious and the wet spring rotted a good number of  them or washed them away. The plants fared better with bright promises of tomatoes, peppers, kale, cabbage, squash, herbs and the ubiquitous bean. Pole beans are bursting out of containers and climbing the fence. Buckets of beans are in the forecast.

The watermelon patch looks iffy.

The master gardener said, "It never gets hot enough here for good melons."

I planted the row for my Hispanic friends that worked so hard setting up the raised beds. Maybe, just maybe, this year will be good for watermelons.

Hoeing the soon-to-be harvest, I hear rap music pouring out of car windows, motorcycle mufflers rumbling and children laughing as they stroll the sidewalks. In between sounds of hot rods racing and sirens chasing I hear birds singing. There's a hoot owl that whooos until noon. A rooster crowing caught my attention the other day. Then I remembered I was in Flint. Instead of in a hen house, I reckoned the rooster was probably a part of a cock fighting operation.

Curious people ask what I'm growing.

Some shout, "Keep up the good work," or "God bless you," as they scurry by.

Four very professional young men, Antwan Love, Sergio Hare, Maurice J. Gray and Maurice L. Gray, volunteering with the Citizens Nuisance Task Force, bring a tanker of water to our minifarm every week. They ask me which plants need more water, then carefully map the hoses so as not to injure any of the young seedlings. They also bring with them a positive attitude that assures me the city still has caring, helpful people.

"What's your favorite vegetable?" I ask.

All four reply in unison, "Collard greens," so I introduce them to mine.

In exchange they offer me their family recipe that calls for special seasonings and neck bones. I promise more batches of greens.

I know the best is yet to come — not the harvest so much as the friendships and the sharing that will happen.

It's a different neighborhood than it was 80 years ago when my church planted itself on Franklin Street. Change occurs. Houses get new owners, some get the wrecking ball. But our fellowship believes that there are some things that never change.

Planting the garden is our way of saying we're here to share.

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