Cultivating a Cornucopia

Meet Kerri.

Kerri is awesome.  She is the kind of person who gives tours of her garden in the pouring rain.  With a Hello Kitty umbrella.  If you can’t tell from her radiant smile, she is jazzed about growing things from the ground up. 

As soon as gardening and faith came onto my radar, I remembered this same “Kerri look” from meetings at our Mom’s Group at Decatur Presbyterian.  Mom’s group is this special place where the tiniest moments are not too small to share, where latte aromas mix with lots of laughter, and yoga pants are the dress code.  We wrestle with frustration, dare to be honest, and seek to be God's people and good mothers.  I remember Kerri talking about her girls in the garden with her – about how their style of gardening was so hilarious and wonderful.  On planting day, she would kind of just let them do their own thing.  And weeks or even months later, there in the middle of the backyard would be random squash or blueberry or whatever it was they had so lovingly "planted" in the middle of the grass.

I am now back in school and she is now back working, but here we are in the rain stooping low to look at celery and bok choi.  

Her yard is magical.  

It is a beautiful landscape of nearly all edible treasures.  Her back deck is covered in grape vines, held up with loads of fishing line.  To one side there is a strawberry patch with a dwarf apple tree in its midst.  To the other side are two urban apple trees that will soon be replaced because the butterflies from the butterfly bushes have decided to eat the apple leaves (who’d have thunk?)!  To one side of the driveway is a row of blueberry bushes.  She has two raised beds full of sweet potatoes, asparagus, bok choi, lettuce, celery, tomatoes, carrots, yum yum peppers, banana peppers, collards, kale, on and on!  She has raspberries and blackberries, lemon verbena (my new favorite thing), sage, and basil.  She has a peach tree and a fig tree.  Kerri is cultivating a cornucopia.

 

I asked probably too many questions about her absolutely breath-taking array of herbs and plants.  And the last question I asked her was why.  Why did she find herself transforming her backyard into an edible playground? 

Kerri responded without missing a beat, “Because it is so very fun to watch something grow that you planted.  And it’s exciting to watch the kids – they grow the food, they pick it out of the ground.  And they just want to try it.  The whole thing is wonderful.”

Kerri isn’t just erecting compost systems and weeding her garden.  She is doing more than feeding her family with fresh food.  She is giving her girls a gift.  She is instilling in them her passion for cultivating, for trying new things.  She shares with them a smile that lights up her eyes. 

They watch when some fruit trees don’t get enough sunlight, they see when the blueberry bushes have to be replanted, they are disappointed when the squirrels make off with all of their grapes, and they get to stick their hands down in the dirt and pull out sweet potatoes for dinner.  They get to watch blackberry brambles grow tall before their very eyes.  They learn about loss and they learn about joy. 

I am so very glad there are people like Kerri.  People who bless the world with a cornucopia – and don’t even know it.