Mysterious Ways

September 27, 2014   

Well, of all the things I could have imagined happening from my little side garden of tomatoes, the one I probably would not have imagined is the one that, in fact, did happen.

While I was sitting at my computer, waiting for the world to drop some spiffy blog post into my lap, there came the tapping of my neighbor, Jackie, at the front door.

As I opened the screen door to invite her in, she pressed a loaf of bread and two boxes of bite-sized, crème-filled chocolate cupcakes into my hands and said, “Eubie went to the day-old bread store and thought you might like these. I’m working today [at the convenience store], so I’ve got to get back to the store.” And off she went.

Eubie is a neighbor who lives down the street. Last spring, while I was hacking away at the grass where I wanted to plant the tomato garden, he was at the store next door and came over to see what I was doing. When I told him, he took the hoe from me and finished the job that I’d been laboring over, pretty much likkety-split. So I told him to be sure and help himself to any tomatoes that might grow there – which I assume he did and that the bread and cupcakes were his way of saying thanks.

Now, I always buy several loaves of bread when I go grocery shopping at the first of the month and stick them in the freezer. But, this month, the loaves began to get moldy almost as soon as I defrosted them and by mid month, I was out of bread.

I walked over to the convenience store, but they were out of bread, too. So, I bought a small box of crackers to use. I had just run out of the crackers, when Jackie showed up at the door last week with an “extra” loaf of bread she’d bought while shopping.

Since I’ve been working outside these last two weeks, getting the garden ready for winter, clipping back bushes, weed whacking weeds and washing the earth boxes and assorted pots that I use for my winter garden, both my breakfasts and my lunches have consisted of throwing whatever I have around between two slices of bread, (or some crackers, or even a couple of thawed-out pancakes when needed,) rather than stopping to cook. And, yep, you guessed it. By this morning, I was almost out of bread, again.

So Eubie’s loaf of bread was needed and welcome (and who doesn’t need a couple of boxes of crème-filled, chocolate anything?) Thus, I am good to go in the bread department until grocery shopping day, next week.

Over the coming weeks, I will finish my outside work, start transplants for the indoor garden, hope for it to produce enough to share some of it this winter and ponder those mysterious ways in which the world tends to work when we throw a few seeds of neighborliness into the winds of change we all sense is coming.