The hope for our Willow Pond Community Garden was to bring the community together - to work together and hope together. It happened sooner and more spontaneously than we thought.
The fence was installed on Saturday, thanks to Generous Men of Texas and Lowe's. The following Monday brought a school holiday and an explosion of paint and community. It began with one father dutifully helping his son to do community service that had been assigned to him because of an infraction. When all the paint brushes appeared from the maintenance department, the event evolved into a day long relay of kids alternately painting and playing.
As I looked around the homework table at Kid's Club the following day, I saw the tell tale signs of oil based paint still in hair and eyebrows and forearms. It was a sign of personal investment and ownership. Now the garden was theirs!
-- Suzanne Wallace
