Other People's Gardens

One of the greatest gifts is permission to gather from another person's garden. It's something that has happened to me, one way or another, all my life. In college way long ago, I joined my rock n roll band in a ramshackle Victorian in Santa Cruz one dreary winter. Come spring: voila, vegetables and flowers sprang up out of gray withered sedge, including apples, blackberries and a persimmon tree, plus a pomegratate bush that must have been planted 50 years before. This year, on an island in France, a tough-hewn guy swung out of his truck cab as he drove out of our village and dropped a sack of vegetables on our stoop. "Use the garden!" he shouted (in French). I wandered around later that day and ducked under a stunted apple tree to find 40 square feet of intensive local agriculture. Gathered up the day's meal (see photo) and for two weeks after, too. So here's to gardeners, and to gardens that keep on giving. Bon Appetit!