I have no great love for the desert, but one good thing I have to say about our great home state is that you can grow REALLY good citrus here. And really good gardens. At least, I hear you can...I wouldn't know. I can't seem to keep my garden alive. Citrus trees, however, are relatively easy to keep alive where I live. All they need is water, a few years to recover from transplant shock, and they thrive. Even with me around! This year, like previous years, we had a bumper crop of citrus. My kitchen was exploding with grapefruit, lemon, valencia oranges and tangerines. I had boxes of it. Now what to do with it all? Along comes this week's project: Scouting for Food. This is an annual food drive the boy scouts participate in. All food they collect is donated to the major food bank in the area that often distributes to other, smaller food banks. My son, our resident Boy Scout extraordinaire, handed out the flyers to our neighbors while my girls rode bikes and roller-bladed. That Saturday, he quickly ran the streets and collected all of the food people had left out for him. However, he wasn't informed correctly about when and where to turn in the food, and by the time we got a hold of the person who would know, he had already deposited the food at the food bank. Oops. So here we are with bags of food. And a kitchen full of citrus. And a really crazy two weeks ahead of us that didn't allow for any time to make the hour round-trip drive to the food bank or to do all the juicing and preserving that needed to be done. Hmmm.... I did some research and found a closer, smaller food bank. I called to set up a time to drop off our food. Before I got off the phone I looked at my boxes of citrus strewn everywhere. I ask: Do you by chance accept donations of perishable items too? Yes! They do! The point to this ridiculously circuitous post: I read an article one time about a lady in Washington State who planted her first ever garden one year and didn't realize exactly how much her garden was going to produce when she planted it. She ended up with a bumper crop and no way to possibly use it all. She called her local food bank and found that they actually look forward to donations of fresh items and can quickly find a home for them. Voila! Problem solved! She started a group that goes around to collect people's excess produce from their gardens and they regularly supply the food bank. How neat is that? It doesn't take a lot to help someone else. If we look hard, there are things we have in excess. There are places in our life where our cup is literally running over. It might not be your garden (definitely not mine), but it could be something else: your talents, your time, or even the trees in your backyard. Take a look around. Where do you have a bumper crop?
