TheMondayGarden.com

The Monday Garden, July 25, 2004, Issue 122

Eco-gardening at its best

In August 2003, with Issue 72 , The Monday Garden went on the web, though the kindness of site host, Mike Burger, who maintains his web servers for his, and his friends’, personal use.

Since much more data can be posted on the web than crammed into your email box, and since, at the site, there’s no worry about your ISP’s spam catchers, you get extra pictures, longer articles, and many useful web links. Almost all past Monday Garden articles have been posted on the web, often with expanded text and more pictures, so you have all these files at your finger tips.

Picture: Mike with son Bubba (Matt)

me trying out my Cousin Nancy’s camera (photo by Nancy trying out my new camera)

So to commemorate the second year in the life of The Monday Garden here’s the COMMUNITY SCRAPBOOK.

The Monday Garden, November 28, 2004, Issue 140A
Eco-gardening at its best
the FREE weekly email

These pictures are from Thanksgiving 2004 at Stamford's First Congregational Church. The church hosts a wonderful annual community dinner on Thanksgiving, free to all comers. Everyone comes, homeowners and homeless, with deliveries for the home-bound.

The church isn't ready to add pictures to their web site yet, so, for now, we'll share a bit of The Monday Garden site.

picture: Stamford's First Congregational Church, late summer 2003

One of the organizers reports for 2004: "I think we prepared over 350 meals.... 200 were for delivery, about 125 in the dining room, plus many taken home for 'leftovers' by the guests in the dining room. We had 2 trays of carved turkey as well as a lot of gravy left over (plus many rolls) but everything else was GONE!"

picture: ancient white oak, Stamford's First Congregational Church, late winter 2003-2004

It takes a slew of volunteers to make it happen, from cooks and decorators to greeters and drivers. There were about 200 volunteers this year. Interestingly, many of the volunteers (like me) are not part of the congregation but found their way here just for this event. Some have been coming back for years. We're all very grateful to the Church for giving us this opportunity.

If you've never had the pleasure of working at a celebration like this, here's what it looks like behind the scenes.

Eco-gardening is at its best in The Monday Garden
December 21, 2005, Issue 190A, updated December 25, 2005

WINTER SOLSTICE 2005: The longest night has been marked, since humans learned to count, by a vigil, a burning light burning or other custom. At some point, the European custom of decorating an evergreen tree got morphed into a Christian symbol. Today, forces of intolerance are attempting to morph Christian symbols into symbols of right v. left, and east v. west. Whatever, the tree belongs to all of us, to light our way through the longest night.

PICTURE: Latham Park, Stamford CT December 2005. Electric lights adorn my town's official "Holiday" tree, which is a young, but respectable, spruce the rest of the year. Across the street, is the First Congregational Church. Click here to view same scene in October 2005

CHIRSTMAS AND HANUKKAH 2005: And in the same place, here's the lighting of the Memorah in the rain, after sunset, on December 25, 2005 when Christmas and Hanukkah fell on the same day:

PICTURE: An ancient holy moment is recreated in Latham Park, Stamford CT December 25, 2005

PRAY FOR PEACE