All day Saturday April 24 we will be celebrating our 7th year Anniversary! We haven't decided exactly what events we will have. Although a Girl Scout troop will bring rocks they have painted to place in a special part of our garden. The public is welcome to come and go--even if no one is in the garden. We will have a guest book for people to sign and let us know what the garden may mean to you. So many of our citizens come and go in the garden that members of Loving Garland Green don't even know who they all are.

A couple of years ago I went down to the garden to work and there was a young woman pulling up weeds in a bed. I didn't know her so I went up and introduced myself. I could see she had been crying. She apologized and said that she hoped it was OK for her to pull weeds. Her grandmother who lived out of state had died that morning and she was a gardener. The women had fond childhood memories of her and felt closer to her down at the garden that morning pulling weeks.

The garden is a very informal and special place. You don't have to be a gardener to enjoy it. We have chairs scattered throughout and a picnic table. Everyone is welcome. We share 50% of our produce with local food banks.

To give another example of how/why we have no idea of all the people who enjoy this garden, yesterday a man came down with his compost for the week. I had never seen him before. For almost three years on Saturday or Sunday he has been donating his vegan leftovers for our compost. Yet I was meeting him for the first time.

I hope you'll drop by on April 24th.