St. Thomas’s Share Garden

Contributed by Stephen Wickman, St. Thomas Episcopal

Members of St. Thomas Episcopal (a founding congregation of Tysons Interfaith) have created a vegetable garden. We are delighted that our garden is starting to yield fresh produce that we are delivering to SHARE of McLean, which is housed at another Tysons Interfaith congregation, McLean Baptist Church.

Our earlier labors of tilling, erecting a fence, purchasing and planting the vegetables, and the on-going weeding and watering are yielding green peppers, squash and cucumber blossoms, little green tomatoes and green beans that have sprouted from seed. We also have eggplants, okra, sweet potatoes and more. Marigolds add cheerful color and act as a natural insecticide.

One of our volunteers had this to say:

“The picture below is a picture of what the Bible calls “first fruits” (e.g. Leviticus 23:10).  The Hebrew word translated, “first fruits” is bikkurim which literally means “a promise to come.” Our four peppers are small in number but a beautiful promise of what is to come. I took our first fruits to SHARE. The woman who received them said, ‘They’re beautiful!’  She was thrilled. Ah, the first fruits are creating the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, and wellbeing.”

We are grateful for SHARE and for St. Thomas’s garden volunteers whose labors of compassion are benefiting our brothers and sisters who are in need of food.

To see a recent post about the garden on Facebook, please visit: https://www.facebook.com

This blog post is the expressed opinion of its writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Tysons Interfaith or its members.