Thy bounty

Growing up Catholic, we blessed each meal with the same prayer: "Bless us, oh Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from the bounty through Christ, our Lord, Amen." As a child, I had no clue what I was saying. I memorized the prayer just like all the other good little boys and girls, and knew when I was finished saying it, I could eat. God decided it was time for me to truly understand the prayer.

Paul and I made a goal for 2013 to volunteer at the Lawrenceville Co-op. We want to give more to our community and strengthen our partnership, so it sounded simple enough. The Co-op is an organization that centralizes the resources of several Lawrenceville churches to provide food and some (limited) financial help to families that are experiencing some temporary set backs. Seeing as how I am currently a stay-at-home fiance, NOW was the best time to take the plunge. Bless Paul's heart, (I can't say things that are that southern, but I can write them) he came along for the ride despite the stress that he is wading through at his job. 

I have had the opportunity to meet a lot of people who needed assistance and have been amazed by how many of these people ONLY want food. Furthermore, I am amazed on how little income these folks support their families on and how creative they are with what they have. To put things in perspective, ideally, Paul and my budget for groceries would be between $25-$50 a week ($100-200 a month) plus a budget for eating out. These families of 5 or 6 spend $200/month on groceries and don't eat out. I am a spoiled brat. Furthermore apparently my word of the day I have never genuinely been hungry. Nor have I had to wake up at 3 am to work a full day (as a janitor) and go home to three kids that remind me they are hungry when I return home by pointing to the empty cabinet. My heart still goes out to this amazing lady who had held herself together until I interviewed her. She doesn't qualify for foodstamps or WIC or other government assistance because she makes "too much" money. She and her husband had spent all of their savings. They HAD savings before he lost his job. The least we can do is help her with food and prayer. And this lady has forever had an impact on my life. 

I came home that first Monday night and cried in Paul's arms. We are blessed. So blessed. And we had become complacent. There is food in our pantry. Too much food, in fact. Should anything catastrophic happen, we could eat good meals three times a day for at least two months. We throw away food because it goes bad (because we have too much) or we don't like the way it tastes. We make cakes and desserts, just because we can, then complain about needing to work out to get rid of the fat. Needless to say, I packed up a lot of the stockpile the next day. Why should I keep 20 boxes of pasta on my self while someone else goes hungry? I took our first group of squash to the co-op because it would have gone bad while we were on vacation. VACATION. I have never realized how blessed I am to be able to go on vacation until this last trip. We spent more in four days than some of these families make in a month. Overlook the money part, we were able to get away from the things that stress us out. That is a blessing. That lady I wrote about, deserves a vacation, and she'll get there. I know it. This is only a temporary setback for her family. 

The bounty through Christ- We all have something that God has given us in abundance that we can share with someone else. For Paul and I, it comes in the form of a listening ear, a helping hand, extra fruit or veggies from our garden, great deals I find with coupons, Paul's expertise with computers, being nice to cashiers and servers, etc. I made a friend at Kroger today. I was looking at the Free Friday coupon item from last week and she asked if I'd tried it. I told her no, but I was going to try it today for FREE and told her how she could get on the eCoupons for Free Fridays too. She looked like she won the lottery. Warmed my heart. Share what you have been given in abundance from God. He blesses us in so many ways and as good stewards we are called to share these blessings with others.

And now for our garden update. The picture above is our harvest for a week. The second bowl was full of grape tomatoes, but I have been eating them as snacks this week and LOVING them. Keep in mind, I harvested all the tomatoes, squash and jalapenos prior to our trip last Thursday.

Our first baby watermelon has decided to grow on a vine that is clinging to the fence. I hope that it will grow into a full watermelon for Paul. Unfortunately, our baby cantaloupes stopped growing. We are still overly empathetic with our plants and I feel bad that the poor cantaloupes are having problems providing fruit. I hope they don't feel like failures.

The two grape tomato plants get A++s. This picture is after I harvested all the red tomatoes today. Look at all those tommy toes!

Can you see the baby jalapenos? There are four, but I only see three in this picture.

The rainstorms knocked one of the sunflowers over. I may make a brace for it since we have already lost one to the yardman. Look at how tall they've grown. All of the gardening led me to knock on the wall and yell out "I'm a farmer! I'm a farmer!" while Paul watched aliens of some sort on tv. He laughed. I am pretty sure that he loves me.