I Declare Myself Qualified

An advantage of growing my own food is that I can have kohlrabi.  This may not seem too impressive a victory, except that I have always liked kohlrabi a lot, but it is not readily available in stores (as you will agree if you have ever happened to look for it, which you probably have not).  At any rate, kohlrabi was not offered to me, and so I allowed my world to contract a little and carried on through the years without it.  Now, I rebel!  Here is the largest of my kohlrabi thus far:

Although I planted all four seeds in this square simultaneously, they somehow managed to stagger their growth, which will be convenient.  It is not that I could not devour four kohlrabies at once; it is rather that I prefer to have an outside force preventing me from doing so.

A couple months ago, the garden had a volunteer day when we built some new raised beds, among other tasks.  A few of us knew what we were doing (notably, and fortunately, the guy using a power saw to cut the wood), but many of us did not.  Still, while it may be a tiring endeavor to screw together a bunch of 4x8 raised beds, it is not a complicated one.  The coordinator broke us out into teams and gave us our instructions, and then left us to it.

What I want to remark upon here though is not the work itself (although it was satisfying) but rather the passers-by walking along the street beside our labors.  They would slow down, sometimes even stop, and stare not just curiously but longingly at our awkward efforts.  I think that our manifest inexpertness was much of the appeal.  “If it’s just random people they want – I am a random person, I could do that!”

I have seen the same effect in play in other volunteering I have done:  particularly when you do not look official, or only semi-official, and you are out and about working on whatever activity that seems as though it might be sort of useful, people suddenly, rather hesitantly, want to do something to help, and they are so extraordinarily happy when they can.  It is encouraging to see, although it also offers the opportunity to reflect upon that this simple, kind, venturesome instinct that is so common is also starved for want of outlets.

There are plenty of tasks in the world that require little to nothing more than the will to embark upon them, and this remains true no matter how often we are told, by means direct or subtle, otherwise.