I’m interning at the sweetest community garden project in Vancouver, The World in a Garden, and this weekend we had a lovely and surprisingly sunny harvest party. The sunshine busted through the weeklong wall of clouds and we were able to spend time in the garden, eating piles and piles of super-ultra-literally-just-picked-fresh kale and fragrant roasted garlic, drink cozy hot apple cider, chat with passerby (and get them on the kale train), sell blueberry jam and stewed tomatoes and honey from the garden tribe of honeybees, give garden tours with tiny people and grownups alike, get some wisdom from the Mayan gardeners from UBC, and listen to the Wheely Slow Cooking Tour, a charming little folk duo. The Wheely girls just got back from a summer tour around the farms of Canada, going wherever seemed right, staying with farmers and eating good, fresh food and writing songs about the earth and fields and food and home and goodness in general. We had a few kids in the garden, guessing the names of plants and digging up tiny carrots and beets, to their total delight.

The next day I was back out in the garden for another sunny day, the brightness countering the coolness. We have drop-in volunteer days on Mondays, and this Monday was particularly quiet, but there were a few visitors, one of which was an amazed little girl who walked around the garden, peeking under leaves at the colorful squash, peering up into blackberry bushes at the last few berries. “Wow, food comes from nature,” she said. I love that, and that’s why I love the garden. We should all know that, and more than just know it, wonder at it! Food comes from nature! And nature can be right smack-dab in the middle of a city, in a little garden nestled between old train tracks.

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