Out of the Garden Project’s Honor Card!

Once again, I am honored to have a piece of my artwork chosen (this one above) for this year’s Out of the Garden Project Honor Card!! Beginning very soon, folks will be able to receive a beautifully printed card with the above painting on it as a way of saying thank you for your donations throughout the Holiday Season.  Click here for more information about this wonderful mission to provide meals for children and their families on the weekends throughout the school year.  It is an EXTRAORDINARY  work started by ordinary people.

Don and Kristy Milholin are ordinary people who, like myself, have a love for ordinary things.  I suspect that they, like me, love to see Beauty happen in unexpected places…perhaps even in hopeless places.  The above drawing, I created in my unassuming small town, in a place that is somewhat hidden from plain view.  I did not travel to France to create this artwork.  I did not go trekking in Nepal.  Nor did I stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon.  I sat down in little ole Kernersville, and put pen and paint to paper.  Ordinary stuff.

I imagine Don and Kristy sitting down a few years ago on their back deck perhaps, and thinking they could provide some food for a few kids at a local school in Greensboro.  A fairly ordinary thought: providing food for those who have difficulty getting it.

I think about Don and Kristy a lot. They don’t know this. But I thought about them in the spring, as my neighbors were planting their gardens.  I thought about how a garden starts off with a good bit of enthusiasm, energy, and some resources.  You have this plot of land, some seeds, a hose.  You plow and dig, plant and stake.  You water.  And then…you wait.  At first it seems like it doesn’t really take much, this gardening thing.

But along about mid-summer, your garden goes POOF! And all of a sudden there are more tomatoes and cucumbers than you know what to do with.  The weeds are multiplying faster than you can deal with them.  The ground can’t seem to get enough water.  And you wonder how you’ll be able to bring in the harvest…there aren’t enough hands, resources, or time to do everything.

I’ve wondered if Don and Kristy feel this way when they look at how their ordinary desire to feed a few children and their families has mushroomed to cover over 40 schools in Guilford and Forsyth Counties, providing weekend meals for over 750 school children.  Out of the Garden Project has surely POOFED.  An extraordinary thing has happened in an ordinary place.  Hope is brought to places where it is lacking. Food is provided for children whose families struggle to have this most basic of human needs.

The amazing thing about all of this, is that when ordinary people pool their ordinary resources, EXTRAORDINARY things can happen.

Your “ordinary resource” may be a bit of time to help sort food, bag it, deliver it.  Maybe you have an ordinary talent or gift that can be given in some way.  Or your “ordinary” may be $5, $10 or whatever. Don and Kristy want to thank you for your monetary donations by giving you an Honor Card for every $5.

Won’t you join me, in offering some of your ordinary resources, to accomplish something extraordinary this fall and throughout the holidays:  Food and Hope for every child!

0 thoughts on “Out of the Garden Project’s Honor Card!

    • jenpedwards says:

      Oh, thanks so much Clare! I absolutely love it when my art can be used toward such a wonderful mission as this! I don’t know about proud….maybe humbled is more how I feel.

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