Author of Today’s Post is Karie
Today, we headed out after breakfast to work at Norris Middle School, where the Big Garden maintains a community garden for the students. The garden had become overwhelmed by weeds, so they asked us to put down cardboard to kill the grass and weeds along the paths between raised beds, and then lay mulch over the cardboard. This is an effective way to kill weeds without harmful chemicals and it keeps the soil replenished as the cardboard and mulch break down. We worked most of the morning to level the ground before putting down cardboard, and mulched about half of the garden before we had to break for lunch and head back to the Big Garden again. Stephanie, one of the staff members at Big Garden worked alongside us and told us that she was so appreciative of all our help. She would have had to work for days to get the work done that we accomplished in one morning!
We were blessed with the opportunity to have lunch at Table of Grace in downtown Omaha, where people pay what they can for a healthy and nourishing…and really delicious…lunch. We spread out as a team to sit with other people in the community and had great conversations about the work we are doing in Omaha. We were especially impressed with Carter, who is 14, and his courage to sit with a complete stranger, even though he had some reservations. We were all so proud of him and he said he felt good about his decision to sit with a man who was sitting alone. We reminded him that his act of courage was also an act of love and that sitting and talking with that gentleman made the Lord happy, too.
The second half of our day was spent weeding and planting more tomato plants at the Big Garden, and as it heated up to about 90 degrees, we were thankful for the spots of shade under some of the trees. The work was hard, but we felt such satisfaction seeing the “fruits” of our labor at the end of the day. Today was our last day at the Big Garden, and tomorrow we will be onto another adventure at Together, Inc. We can’t wait to see what’s in store for us in the morning!