Inaugural Day

I live in Detroit. The last presidential election had a special resonance for people in Detroit. Election day was magical. I run before work and decided to run by the school where I vote. The lines were already outside the school and across the lawn almost to the street. This never happens. I decided to take a late lunch and vote in the middle of the afternoon. When I voted there was still a line. I'm generally voter 200. I was voter 577. I drove by the polls just before they closed. They were deserted: everybody had already voted. No one wanted to be left out.

Inauguration Day was another special day. My brother's wife is retired. She has a brother in DC, realized that it meant she had a place to stay, so she went to the inauguration. My neighbor across the street took her daughter out of school and got on a bus so that they could be at the inauguration. Our Community House had an almost impromptu pot luck to watch the inauguration on a big screen. It was a bitterly cold, festive day in Detroit.

It seems fitting that the first Garden Resource pot luck was held on inauguration day: new beginnings. Even though it was bitterly code and it was the night of the inauguration, the pot luck was packed. Last year the number of people in the Garden Resource Program increased by 45%. This year family gardens are going to get 32 packets of seeds and 138 plants for $10. These people are very serious about encouraging locally grown food. They have free classes on composting, gardening, canning, etc and have setup a program to help you sell any extra produce that you have at local farmer's markets. This is literally a grassroots organization.

And the next day I got my Johnny's Seed Catalog. Even though there is 18 inches of snow on the ground and the temperature is in the single digits, I'm excited.