While at L’s, I again feel good. When Rashmi leaves for the hot sauce—30 miles away and worth it—I think about how important it is to us—Rashmi, Andy, Jean, Carol, Margaret Ann, David, Emily, Sam (Emily and Sam were there at J+C’s to clean/blanche the kale; they also grow food at J+C’s, and are altogether stellar people)—almost all of my closest friends— how important food is to us. We love to eat. But we also think deeply about where our food comes from, about responsibility, sustainability. And especially about community. We all work along a theory that food centers community. We get together to eat, we cook together, we drink together. We talk about what tomato starts are working, what pepper varieties we’re considering. Shop talk is food talk—growing, cooking, eating. Because of that, a few of us started a nonprofit—Druid City Garden Project—dedicated to creating green spaces/garden spaces in underserved communities. We started the nonprofit after I’d live here for a few years and we finally decided we wanted to change Tuscaloosa’s landscape. This is a town constantly threatened by Wal-Mart, by Archer Daniels, by Monsanto—it’s a town like a lot of towns in the US. It’s a town with bullies. DCGP is our response. Our first garden is/was at University Place Elementary and Middle School, which was destroyed by the Tornado. Our garden survived—though infected with insulation—and so it will have to be rebuilt. While I’m cooking kale that I harvested that morning, looking forward to feeding some folks this wonderful wonderful food, that means so much to me, I think about the DCGP garden, that it’s gone, that it will
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