Cutting Garden

The importance of fresh flowers in the home...

I am enjoying growing food in my garden, in clients gardens and all over my neighborhood but I also enjoy my flowers...all of which I cut and use. About half of my growing space is dedicated to cut flowers. It would be extreme to change over all flower beds into vegetable beds even if I was not using the flowers from my garden for work. A flower and food garden complement each other in so many ways.

I have been thinking a lot about this since visiting Hillwood Mansion yesterday. In many ways the house was not appealing. You can tell it was designed it to function as a museum, not a pleasant place to live. However to work there must have been a Joy. The Kitchen occupied more square footage than her bedrooms. the equipment and fixtures for the kitchen or Huge greenhouse for that matter were far more advanced than in Mrs. Post's Bathroom... All this brings me to the cutting garden which to this day thrives far better than any gardens we see at any museum in DC... This Garden ranks up there with Dumbarton if only because of its functionality. On our recent visit there were beautiful flowers clearly home grown and elegantly arranged throughout the house. The Greenhouse houses hundreds of orchids, other plants and many types of moss that are in constant rotation... A fabulous Place to work as a chef or a florist, not as fabulous to be a resident.

I have planted many edible gardens this year. I am thinking, that for anyone who has room, a flower cutting garden is the perfect companion to the vegeatable garden.

Non Cheese

The highlight of a long walk today was a large pizza that we got from VACE on Connecticut Ave in DC. When we had our restaurant, every New Years Eve we would order a stack of pies from VACE, just to get everyone working through a long grueling night. Today it was just the three of us and a tomato sauce, tomato, sun-dried tomato, artichoke and onion Pizza Pie. We had no cheese–We order non cheese pizzas all the time. Sometimes from places that offer specific non cheese "Marinara Pizzas" and other times we request a non cheese pizza and get varying reactions.

As it turns out the original Sicilian Pie was that of just tomatoes and crust. One of the best pizzas that follows this tradition is Totonno's originally in Coney Island. Unfortunately their Coney Island shop burned down, however they do have three other shops in Manhattan.

Totonno's calls their non cheese pizza a Neapolitan. Two Amy's here in DC calls theirs a Marinara (and is D.O.C.). Similar to heirloom tomatoes it is fascinating to see these pizzas turn up–not as dietary or faddish nutrition marketing techniques but a part of the mining of the history of tomato pies. They shouldn't be considered 'less' anything...

Nothing against a good slice of buffalo mozzarella but to add cheese to pizza CAN hide a multitude of sins. And lets face it the crust is what makes a pizza and a good crust does not need anything. So to offer a pizza without cheese takes a fair amount of confidence, And to let one leave your kitchen when someone orders no-cheese and you don't offer a no-cheese is even more gutsy (if you care about what you are doing...). Pizza is not an easy thing to do and hats off to anyone accommodating our special requests!

Pizza is also like religion for some–checkout this NY Times article on Difara's. John has eaten their pie many times and would not dare ask for a non cheese...

Today, VACE sent us an amazing pie that had just the right amount of snap in the crust. Just the right amount of yeasty beer flavor in the crust and a level of sauce that just moisten the top of the crust enough so that we never thought about cheese. It made us wonder why VACE didn't offer a Marinara or Straight Tomato pie...

Our Three favorite Pies that happen to not have cheese are Franny's in Brooklyn , Vace in Cleveland Park or Bethesda and Two Amy's in Cleveland Park...

Beware when ordering a pizza not intended to be without cheese that there will be less salt.... for a pie intended to have cheese will take into consideration the saltiness of cheese and will compensate–at VACE we buy pitted Kalamata olives and add ourselves...

Twenty First Century Neighborhood

We stumbled into the Building Museum today. We were on a neighborhood hike and couldn't resist the gigantic red brick warehouse/palace–a major landmark for us close to home. We have been thinking a lot about how many past perspectives have become useful to us and the idea of how contemporary life is finding relief by slowing down and returning to some 16th, 17th and 18th century perspectives.

Phillip Trager's show at the Building Museum seems to be built around Action shots of Twentieth Century dancers, New York City and Paris (capitals of the Industrial Revolution) and 16th century Italian Renaissance architecture. Photos of Modern Dancers in landscapes hung next to photos of Figures embedded in mostly late 19th century architecture, highlight a disruption–the human body represented as a movement as well as a statue. This juxtaposition creates a call and response where statue replaces body and body replaces statue and ultimately forms a question of What is contemporary human's place in the world, not as master? Form and Movement is the title of the show. Trager's work on Palladian architecture (symmetrical late 16th century villas) further develops this question–for Trager refrains from a human figure in his Palladian villa work and we are left to wonder how we fit into these gorgeous villas with our awkward 20th century minds and bodies...
"As the Industrial revolution replaces animal and human power with water, steam and fossil fuels" is how the Green Communities exhibition begins. We are now able to live further than a walk to work and our urban planning has followed suit. Green Communities reminds us that at one time the distance a human voice could travel helped us decide how we designed our living communities. The consequence of machine reliance on our bodies, minds and environment is made evident through this exhibition. Ebenezer Howard's Garden City Movement in London is pointed to as one of many examples throughout the exhibition–almost as a reminder that the current struggle for our ecology is not a new one but one that has been exacerbated by the twentieth century...
After we left the Building Museum we had lunch in the park across from the courthouse and then headed into I. M. Pei's East Wing of the National Gallery of Art.
Billed as the Greatest still life painter of eighteenth century Spain, Luis Meléndez's artichokes, pomegranates, melons, the greatest paintings of bread I have ever seen, cauliflower, honey jars, oranges, aubergines, tomatoes (definitely heirloom before heirloom was) and figs are anything but still. Commissioned by the prince and princess of Asturias to do an extensive series of still lifes for the New Cabinet of Natural History. The four seasons of food produced by Spanish climate were Meléndez's subjects. There are two paintings of a chocolate service with pots and whisks next to bread and silver dollar size chocolate discs. Next to these are crumpled paper and a copper pot for what seems like melting. These paintings vibrate with action, the potential of something about to happen. The chocolate paintings are displayed near actual tools that can be seen in the paintings and further the notion of a wanting to perform... This work makes me want to create, cook, paint... but mostly grow food that resembles these paintings–nothing like I see at the Super Market...

The paradox here is that Through technology the twenty first century has offered us the ability to hold multiple narratives in our head at the same time. This Paradox is a more open and hopeful perspective than the negation of past practices and perspectives that developed the twentieth century. We embrace Technology AND Past Practices with awareness to the ramifications of our actions both past and present...

Hans, Michael and Julia

Discussing Michael Pollan's Article this Sunday in the NYTimes Magazine, John referred me to the poet and media theorist, Hans Magnus Enzensberger 1970 essay called: Constituents of a Theory of the Media. In this essay Enzensberger lays out a radical call to decentralize media and resist central broadcasting. After reading Pollan's conclusion of encouraging us to 'cook it ourselves" I would take Enzensberger's concluding paragraph and replace the word 'artist' with 'chef' and develop a new call :

'For the old-fashioned “artist”(chef)—let us call him the author—it follows from these reflections that he must see it as his goal to make himself redundant as a specialist in much the same way as a teacher of literacy only fulfills his task when he is no longer necessary. Like every learning process, this process too is reciprocal. The specialist (chef) will learn as much or more from the nonspecialists as the other way round. Only then can he contrive to make himself dispensable.'

I love this idea of literacy in that we can be media illiterate and food illiterate and yet still actively or passively consume. Pollan does a great job of pointing out this connection over and over again–between media and food consumption as well as production. Contemporary anxiety of fast pacedness encourages a false sophistication, that is to say we watch chefs cook in lieu of cooking ourselves and decide what is good without ever eating.

What Pollan's article misses is that originally Julia Child's work WAS an instruction book (without any photographs or pictures except for drawn diagrams). Child's two volume book has inspired many chefs and cooks, while food network television stars skip this step of intense instruction (proving that they do not want to make themselves redundant). The true literacy project that Julia Child bought to America (as did MFK Fischer and James Beard) was "Mastering The Art of French Cooking".

Pollan makes Julia out to be the epitome of Enzensberger's artist, with her goal to make herself redundant, as a specialist much the same way a teacher of literacy fulfills their task when they are no longer necessary. Like Enzensberger's artist, what Julia brought to life in a television show, more so than in the books, was that we were all in this together, this was a learning process and this process was reciprocal. That is to say that although we were watching television, Pollan points out the ways in which she was able to make it interactive.

Media now displays many of the attributes that Enzensberger called for, via youtube, twitter and blogs. We DO have the beginnings of constituents making their own narratives, writing their own histories separate from centralized media. However, this discussion began with a blockbuster theater release–So it is a combination of hierarchy and meshwork that develops our understanding of everything. The in between places of grand narratives and individual stories are where we can find clearer, more complex and richer pictures of how we function. And this food issue may be the most important function. Our goal now should be to understand how to use these tools to set up expansive food practice exchanges. And in this, render the so-called specialist (chef) redundant.

Best Life Diet

I spent lots of time this week working on Best Life projects. The Best Life Diabetes book that I wrote recipes and, with the help of several nutritionists, meal plans for is due back to the publisher tomorrow. This has been the second chance we have had to edit it since we turned it into the publisher in late April (book will be available in November). Over the last week I poured through my section of the book with a red pencil looking for any changes that needed to be made. Today I spent a good part of the day coming up with breakfasts that will be part of a diabetes meal planning tool that will be available on line in November of this year.

For the last couple of years I have been working for Bob Greene in conjunction with his Best Life Diet creating recipes for books, website and blog. When I was first contacted by Janis an old friend to do this work I immediately said I was the wrong person for the job. I knew nothing about diets and am not sure how I even feel about diet in the sense that the word is generally used. I was assured that the fact that I knew nothing about diet food was a plus. Janis explained that she had contacted me because she was looking for good food that fit into the Best Life Diet. Our cooking has always been clean and light not to fit into any parameters but in order to taste the actual flavors of the excellent quality foods that we gather. Also it is the food that makes us feel good and that we want to eat.

She passionately described the need for changes in the American Diet which will only come through a connection to food that starts with cooking. Her idea was that if people who did not have a healthy relationship to food could begin cooking this relationship could begin to repair. She believed that our recipes could help . After some back and forth I decided to give it a try. I immediately found that the two greatest obstacles were the need to use very little salt (essential for people that are extremely overweight) and only ingredients that are easily available throughout the country. I quickly learned a lot about cooking with little salt and ways around it such as lots of flavor through onions, garlic, fresh herbs, hot sauce...and adding salt at the last minute before serving. I am still frustrated by the lack of affordable raw ingredients in many parts of the country. My biggest surprise however was how easy it was to make recipes that fit into the Best Life parameters. This was no strange regime to follow just healthy well rounded meals. Portion size, calories, saturated fat...have been no problem at all.

I have learned lots through this process. I hope that sharing recipes and my love of cooking and eating with a larger audience has found its way into some peoples kitchens, dining tables and life.

Garden Encounter

Several weeks ago we planted 12 tomato plants and some arugula seeds in the neglected front yard of the house next door to us. The house has been abandoned for about 4 years and is in severe disrepair. The planting led to lots of tomatoes and beautiful arugula which we have enjoyed and shared with neighbors and passer byes, connecting with an elementary school and having a class of first graders visit our home garden, meeting a group of people working on a large teaching garden just out our back door and numerous other encounters.

Today I came home to find a man just finishing removing all of the food growing next door to us. After pausing I got out of the car and went to shake the mans hand who had just pulled all the plants out of the garden. He started apologizing. He explained that his boss who owned the property had demanded against his protest that he remove the food. As we talked he explained that he had carefully removed all of the tomato plants and put them in bags on our front stoop. The tomato plants are temporarily in pots safe and watered and waiting to be replanted.

Of course we knew that this was a possibility but the event has left me very confused. How is it that planting food and rehabilitating the tiny patch of soil in front of a crumbling house could be anything but positive? Tonight I pause, tomorrow I will try to contact the owner of the property, confer with neighbors and figure out the best way to proceed.

Homemade Rhubarb Ketchup

I enjoy making and serving foods that are usually thought of as store bought. Ketchup, which pairs so well with many summertime foods, is one of those usually store bought foods. Homemade Ketchup only vaguely resembles store bought and enhances nearly everything off the grill, including meat, poultry and vegetables. Instead of tomato ketchup everyone in my house is hooked on a rhubarb ketchup that we each make. There is usually some in the refrigerator from early spring when rhubarb is first available until it goes out of season in early fall.

The tangy sweetness makes it an ideal condiment. This recipe is merely a guide, we do not follow a recipe to make this so adjust agave and spices to your personal taste...or if you do not have rhubarb substitute for tomatoes.

Rhubarb Ketchup

Prep time 5 minutes

Total time 20 minutes

4 stalks rhubarb chopped

3 tablespoons agave nectar

1/8 teaspoon cinnamon

small pinch of cloves

1 teaspoon molasses

2 tablespoons cider vinegar

1.Place all ingredients in a medium sauce pan and bring to a simmer. Cook until ketchup gets thick, this will vary depending on the amount of water in the tomatoes but should take from 15-30 minutes. Continue tasting and adjust seasoning to taste.

2.Place mixture in a food processor and process until smooth, about 1 minute. Chill and use.

organic???

A couple people asked me today if I had seen the study that came out from the UK today stating that organic food had no nutritional benefit. I often question the idea of "certified organic" since in many cases the standards are questionable (why are we not shooting for biodynamic or something else beyond organic?) and are often not accessible to smaller farmers (since it costs money to get certified). When we had our restaurant Ruppert's we would answer the question "is everything here organic" by explaining that although many things were if we stuck to that rule we would not be able to use the greens, herbs and figs that we grew in our own city garden just blocks from the restaurant...or serve the baby leeks that one of our favorite organic farmers elderly neighbor grew. By unquestionably accepting the certification we would not be involved in the evaluation process but would be giving that decision making up to an entity in power to deem whether or not a certain food was certified or not.

Despite, I am certain that organic food is superior to most conventionally grown foods. Even more so if we get past nutrient content and acknowledge that we need to live in collaboration with the planet to be healthy (how is this not obvious??). I was further confused by the source of todays information because my favorite sources for up to date information about good food practices are from the UK, The Ecologist and The Guardian. So, as soon as I came home I read the headlines of the study released today and then I turned to the Guardian to see what they had to say. They articulated my thoughts and more, check out todays article "Good Reason For Going Organic".

food oasis

Yesterday I continued an ongoing discussion with Janis Jibrin, a good friend and the lead nutritionist for Bob Greene's Best Life Diet. Janis initially got me involved in the Best Life Diet. Since I started working with her on this project we have had endless conversations about the difficulty of finding fresh produce and basic ingredients in many parts of the country.

Ideally the problem of obesity and diabetes should be dealt with on the front end eliminating the need for prescription on the back end... If fast and convenience foods are the only food choices available there is no opportunity to experiment with raw ingredients or at least choose what we enjoy and not be told what we enjoy.

I rely on a mesh work of mediocre and high end grocery stores, fantastic farm markets, a CSA, specialty stores and my own garden for food. These resources are not distributed equitably throughout the city. Even two separate stores of the same grocery chain do not necessarily offer equal quality produce in two different neighborhoods. Relative to other parts of the country such as Detroit the situation in DC is not dire. I know that in some parts of the country none of these options for are available.

Of course the goal in making fresh food available is ultimately improving health. The Green Carts program in New York City and Will Allen's urban farming projects open opportunities to encounter raw ingredients in areas that were previously food deserts.

I wonder why in every neighborhood in New York there are bodegas selling fresh fruit and vegetables while in other urban and rural areas produce is scarce. The issues may be one of culture more than anything--when school systems ban home baked goods in response to wide spread peanut allergies (instead of asking for things baked at home for school consumption to be free of peanuts) we should read this as a sign that our culture privileges corporations and their food over individually produced food and our own choices.

smell the flowers

Photo Rodney Bailey

Like usual I have flowers, cooking and gardening projects going. Today I stopped by one of the container gardens that I planted this season to see how things were looking. I ended up trimming a large disheveled looking scented geranium plant. After the first snip I realized that what I had planned to discard would enhance the brides bouquet that I am making and the extra leaves would add flavor to vegan shortbread I will use for a magazine photo shoot later this week. Immediately I went to get a container of water so I could keep the cuttings fresh and use them for these purposes.

I am sensitive to the odor of flowers. My front garden plot is full of herbs, we all run our hands across the lavender, lemon balm, mint…as we walk by to catch a whiff. I use these herbs in both cooking and flower arrangements and many of the other flowers that I get from my own garden and other sources are full of smell. However I often put a flower up to my nose that I expect to be fragrant and instead discover it is scentless. Most grocery store roses are without scent while the ones from my garden and others that I get from small growers are gloriously scented. I did a little research and learned about a few different factors that impact scent. From what I understand scent is made up of many different biochemicals that the plant produces. This make up in concert with optimal atmospheric conditions creates scent. Some atmospheric conditions such as pollution causes of loss of scent in flowers. Also it seems that many flowers are bred to last long, to withstand lots of travel time and once this is achieved scent is often sacrificed. This is a familiar story and brings to mind the mid winter supermarket tomato that looks like a tomato but does not necessarily taste like a tomato.

This season I had a couple of events where scent was a priority. A recent bouquet was composed of garden roses, gardenias and scented geranium…yes it was beautiful but also it achieved the goal of being deeply fragrant. During the summer season I will continue to search out richly scented flowers and foods.

MFK Fischer

When we had Rupperts we read MFK Fischer lots, everything we could find, and then re-read it. For several years I have read none. Recently returning to these familiar essays with new perspective they are still precious and unique. Last night I was re-captivated by one entitled, "When a Man Is Small". It is directly on target with my current thoughts about eating, nutrition and pleasure. Although I had consciously forgotten the contents I can't help but wonder if this particular essay influences my current practice and that I have subconsciously been considering it since my original reading years ago.

MFK Fischer discusses how our relationship with food both intellectually and physically changes as we age. She refers to La Rochefoucauld's aphorism: "To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art." Fischer talks about the mindless sensuality of over eating and references Epicurus: "the intelligent enjoyment of the pleasures of the table."

I recommend anyone interested in the art of eating to read "The Art of Eating".

DANCE!

If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.

Emma Goldman

We went to a Dance Recital tonight and this quote kept playing in my head as I watched our ten year old dance her heart out.... We had been gardening the hours prior to the recital–setting up containers upon containers of seedlings for space undetermined. This brings me joy: the idea that we can plant things, share live things almost anywhere we can find a patch of soil. Marking the in-between-places, not as some grand gesture of Change or Sustainability but an offering of the practice of living things. We prepare to live outside the grid. Not completely outside the grid but a percentage. Grow a percentage of our own food. This is not a radical act nor a great one, only the expression of life. We realize that we are not putting ourselves in harms way as graffiti artists did in the eighties–tagging private property–pushing us to the question: is there such a thing as public space? You see, we don't feel the need to chase after danger in search of notoriety, but what we do see is that the ways and means are very much a part of the purposes. Like the author of the above quote, we agree, that if we separate the ways and means from purpose to establish ends, then we are doing nothing more than proselytising a new religion.

"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution" reframes the very notion of revolution by taking into account the importance of play. Play in the sense of free play and in terms of slack or room to move. Over a hundred and fifty years ago as Michael Pollan reminds us, we had this Darwinian Revolution, the revolution of a perspectival shift that rendered the very notion of revolution into evolution. From Darwin AND Goldman, we feel the importance of practice, play and pleasure AND to leave behind the in-between-spaces would result in the belief in Miracles. That is to say: something out of nothing and we all know the nature of things is so much wonderfully MORE!

Callaloo

“Eat your greens!” Only with us it's "Where’s your green?" You see, as chefs who develop dishes and plan menus, a main course is not complete unless there are greens built-in on some level. For example a black bean burrito will have raw spinach incorporated, a curry may have savoy cabbage, sushi needs a seaweed salad, a roasted chicken pairs with collard greens.

Habits are unthinking repetitive action–and after years of coming up with dishes and thinking "Where’s the green?" I can honestly say that I don’t think about it, I just automatically include a form of greens in almost every dish–to the point where a pizza is not complete without a salad.

This time of year we grow and eat a lot of a green called Callaloo. Also known as Vegetable Amaranth, Callaloo is the main ingredient of a West Indian Dish of the same name. The dish Callaloo contains Okra and Taro and is also thought of as a "Jamaican Gumbo". Callaloo the green is slightly sweet and has a subtle corn-like flavor. It should be cooked almost immediately after picking. Callaloo is a favorite summer green, which is good because it grows like a weed here, as the summers are much like that of Jamaica, only with out the gorgeous clear waters of the Caribbean...

Tonight we ate Callaloo (the green) simply roasted with grape seed oil, salt and pepper, John rolled some whole wheat noodles and I made a red bean spread flavored with some herbs and about a dozen roasted bunching onions from our garden.

Greens help us practice dietary needs, enjoyment of flavors and where our food comes from. Simply put, demands and desires. From this perspective of intertwined nutrition, eating and gathering, we begin to see that health, aesthetics and food ethos create a tension and it is that tension that helps us all become better cookers as well as eaters, gardeners as well as neighbors.

Flower Collaboration

Photo Rodney Bailey

While I was doing flowers at our restaurant Rupperts we often travelled to Europe, mostly Paris where would eat at places like Pierre Gagnaire to experience just what three Michelin stars means. I would also always check out George V to see what they were doing with their flowers in the lobby as well as my favorite small neighborhood flower shops and Christian Tortu. Looking back I feel this had a profound effect on my designs.

Of course this was the Nineties and everything was highly stylized, however you could always count on the floral designer at George V to keep thing simple–Abundantly Simple. The color schemes, the use of huge bunches of the same flower and the simple tying off of bunches and laying them slanted in a vase.

I basically did three arrangements at the restaurant: One in each of the two rest rooms and a large arrangement either in the front or the middle of the dinning room... I liked the element of surprise once you got in the bathrooms and also the idea that one could experience the flowers in solitude.

My arrangements at first were mostly greens and whites and if I used color I did not stray to far from monotone... I still find an abundance of one type of flower completely satisfying...

Most of my flowers are now used for weddings and other special events. Often I am forced outside of the simplicity I cherish. I still use local and seasonal flowers carefully sourced from a variety of growers. However I often find that some of my greatest pleasure comes from a collaboration between myself and the client. A recent request for a garden wedding, where specific varieties of flowers and scent were more important than color, led me to subtle beautiful arrangements that are among some of my favorites that I have done this season. Next weekend I am doing a colorful wedding...although mixing the vibrant hues of late summer flowers is not the direction that I naturally go I am excited to work with this bright color palette. I look forward to preparing arrangements that will result in a collage of the brides and my own likes and dislikes.

A Visit In The Garden

Earlier this month a group of ten first graders were walking by our house and wanted to know about our herb garden and the tomato patch we planted at the abandoned lot next door. I said hello and encouraged each of them to grab a tomato.

Well, at about eleven o’clock this morning Tanina, a summer counselor in the midst of a career change came knocking on my door. “Can we bring 10 first graders here to see where food comes from?” Tanina was very persuasive as someone who controls first graders should be. She asked if 1:30 would be OK–I said sure not knowing exactly what to expect.

We have been talking about starting a teaching garden at a nearby Kipps school. Also I have been contacted about an orchard at Eastern High School… We have talked extensively about how, what, when and why we would want to do something like this… we know we want to. I actually plant gardens with families in Chevy Chase and Georgetown and would like to extend this practice to those who cannot afford it.

Tanina showed up at exactly 1:30 we began in the herb garden and explained how we cook with Herbs. They passed around lemon verbena, basil and smelled the thyme and rosemary… A “yuck” was screamed as someone bit into raw sage…

We then went to the back yard and talked about fig trees and making fig preserves in mid August when the figs become ripe. These kid’s eyes got big as saucers as Tanina led them a little, “Mr. John you mean you get on a ladder and pick all this fruit?” The children asked a million questions all at once–so exited. My garden, all of the sudden, seemed like the most magical place to ME!

I took them down to the burnt out garage where we have a vegetable garden. We picked tomatoes, Pulled carrots and plucked strawberries. I took everything we picked inside to wash and peel…

John at this point pulls out the warm farm composter and explains how we put our kitchen scraps in to feed the worms and the food that moves through the worms, creates soil and nourishment for the vegetables. The kids all hold out there hands, as they want to hold a worm…

I walk out with a tray of sliced fruit and vegetables, washed and sliced. The same food they have just picked now they are going to taste… Tanina explains, “This is just a taste not a snack-–save some for everybody...” “these carrots are so sweet” a child exclaims.

We walk to the front and Bob Wollam, my local flower farmer pulls up and his van is brimming with zinnias, rudbeckia, dahlia, hydrangea… he invited all the children in the van, “Oooo, it smells good in here” He cuts a path so the Children walk in the side door and out the back door… One of the Counselors says, “Mr. Bob you remember me?” It seems he used to have a community garden in Shaw where he would encourage the kids in the neighborhood to garden with him… Now he is passing out flowers to their children…

This was the perfect day for us, for none of this was planned and none of this was an accident, however the meshwork of necessity and aleatory leads us in our pleasure and our practice…