Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Reflection on the November Potluck

At the Lords table, all are welcome! Come few and the many, come small, come big and your families too. This still stands to be one of the greatest assurances of salvation in my life.
 The J.W. Johnson garden is a welcoming space, that brought me into the family, and my dream is to continue in every step of the way to pass that invitation on any others who cross its place. Although it is a selfish  dream, the idea of this being a central hub of the neighborhood is not a far stretch given that the Johnson school has a long history and the location is by far one of the most popular corners. So I have always thought it fitting to eventually have barbecues and potluck meals open to the community.
  Well I finally got all my ducks in a row to plan our first P-Town J.W. Johnson community garden potluck! I sucked it up to learn some basic tools to online social networking, stuck my neck to invite as many people as I knew who are involved or invested in the garden, and made a pretty decent flier to advertise the event around the neighborhood.
     I will be honest for an idea that I have had for quite a while, I only decided to attack the idea into a real event two weeks prior. Which  although gave enough time to get people invited and  informed, it would have behooved me to have a couple more weeks to plan things fully through.
    For instance, planning an outdoor event in an uncovered space should probably have a backup plan for the likely or unlikely chance of rain. Well... the forecast had been 40% chance in the beginning of the week and I swear I heard a weather forecast for no chance of rain over the weekend, so of course I just keep plugging away at inviting folks and publicizing. Well, when does it rain the most?..When you have 13 people plus 8 house mates who RSVP'd and over 120 flyer hung and passed out, a great local chef reserved to come out and prepare a wonderful kale salad and grill up some marinated pork, a load of fresh smoked smoked turkey from a buddy at St.Charles, a buddy's borrowed truck filled with  borrow picnic tables from a sister church... This is when it rains: (
     After setting tables up and several people get to the garden with side dishes, I find myself frantically searching for pop-up tables. Finally I get a call from Layne, with a very supportive suggestion maybe to just quit fighting the reality of  the weather and shoot for rescheduling it for the next day where it was scheduled for a beautiful sunny day! So I let go of my pride, we loaded up the tables, took all the food back to the Gentilly house and then proceeded to throw out a heads up to people on the RSVP.
Well it all ended up working out pretty well. We heated up the food back home and brought it all back out to the garden. Layne brought the boom box, we had a spread of food and it was a beautifully sunny day. My wonderful YAV family was so supportive and there were several families that came!





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