Guacamole fresh from the garden

I was just sitting here thinking that despite all the troubles in the world, despite all of the sources of stress, despite all the dangers lurking around bends in the road - well, it's nice to be able to go to my kitchen and make guacamole for breakfast using only ingredients from my garden (with the avocados donated from my brother and sister-in-law's garden. The lemons and the garlic were from my garden. And if I'd wanted to add them, I could have put in tomatoes from my garden as well. In the summer, we have just about any herb you could want for tea or any other culinary purpose. I've got various lemon, lime, limquat, clemantine and (soon) pink grapefruit trees that produce more fruit than we can even come close to using up. And this creates a nice reason to reach out to neighbors so we can share all of the excess fruit. They in turn share apples, grapes and lichee fruit with us. I bring kumquat preserves to my mother-in-law a few times a year. We have artichoke plants scattered around the garden mixed among all of the flowers and trees and we've got forests of aloe vera in case we get burned in the kitchen using up all of the bounty we've collected in the garden. With all of the reasons to get worked up in life, it's my garden that always reminds me of the wonderful joy and simple pleasures just waiting for us if we only stop to see them.

Last year, our new neighborhood park finally got trees and plants. And I was thrilled to see a major portion of the park dedicated to edible plants that the community is free to enjoy. There are sage plants, thyme, basil, lemon balm, lemon verbena, mint, lavender, oregano, rosehip and likely other herbs I can't recall at the moment. There are olive and pomegranate trees, carob and fig trees. I'm so impressed that the city has decided to think beyond the box and do more than add play grounds and park benches. This year the city also instituted a program to distribute the yearly crop of dates and figs free of charge to the community. They also made the date palm branches and fruit "brooms" available to anyone who wanted them. All of these efforts can only improve our community spirit and bring us that much closer together as a community should be.

So if you've got a plot of dirt, plant something edible in it. Use it, enjoy it, share it and care for it.