After 45 years of living on two consecutive small farms just beyond the suburbs, we moved to an over-55 condo community in a town that is now very suburban. I really missed my vegetable garden. Fortunately our community has a pea patch area so I can grow some of the essentials and there is enough space in our patio area for lettuce tucked in amongst the flowers, tomatoes in pots and plenty of herbs.

At the Pea Patch plots I have found that the average gardener doesn’t know what kale is or how to use it, but all the Europeans (and there are quite a few of them) are thrilled to get my handouts of kale or chard if they haven’t planted it themselves (most do). One Italian lady told me that she eats it almost every day -for her health. There isn’t much growing at the Peapatches right now, but my plots still have plenty of chard and kale because they will be growing all winter. (zone 7B)

Actually, if I were ambitious, I could be still be growing lettuce and other cool-weather greens under plastic-covered hoops. OK, maybe later.

We have an active Kiwanis club here and the members have a regular routine of picking up food , especially produce, from the grocery stores and taking it to the foodbank. Our condo community library has a book sale every year and the extra books go to the foodbank (“man does not live by bread alone…).

It hurts my heart every time I am in the produce part of my store and see the big bins being filled with all the trimmings from cabbage and lettuce and other veggies because I ask them once if anyone picks up the discarded vegetables and they said no. Years ago I used to pick up big boxes full at my store and raised a lot of chickens and rabbits on them. As a matter of fact, there were often perfectly good whole veggies in among the trimmings. Those were “diverted” to the house.

I imagine those barrels are emptied into the dumpster. Ugh! Waste is a shame.

I don’t know how people learn resilience and gain a sense of hope that gets them through really hard times Family stories, history, help, faith and of course my own efforts have helped. The ongoing theme of doing the best you can with what you have seems to run through many lives.

During the summer I volunteer for a community garden that donates organic produce to low income seniors. But many of the residents of the senior housing development were saying that they may not be able to afford to stay in the subsidized housing because their rent was raised twice this year to help with increasing fuel costs.

There are many newly middle class folks that are taking a step backwards but there are many already poor that are suffering even more. I think about the promises in the nineties when welfare reform was all the rage. Remember The Contract with America; with the promise of a minimum wage job, less time with your young children and stress of trying to find underfunded subsidized childcare. But there was always the hope that you could raise yourself up out of poverty. There was always hope that with some job training or higher education you would get your slice of the American Dream. Instead, dreams denied by many for many and no safety net left for all. geesh…

Two things – I know Rebecca knows this, but just a point about Dacyzyn’s managing – the 30K was in the 1980s, and because her husband was in the military for much of the time, they had health care benefits. My family of six lives in the low 40K – but we have good benefits, and I don’t know if we could do as well if we didn’t. IMHO, health care may be the most urgent thing we need to get to some kind of manageable new system.

Sharon