Giving Service

To help develop self sufficiency, we have been helping members and nonmembers put in gardens. Of course, this working in the outdoors also helps machete girl mom to be energized. Here's our starter balcony garden with plants that mom gives to people to help them jump start their gardens.

Here we are helping our friend Tom weed his raspberry bushes while we talk to him about the meaning of life.

Who is this checking on our work? Tom's artistic son created this chainsaw art garden gnome last weekend from a fresh stump.

Tom is a retired doctor who lived for 48 years in Cleveland and is a diehard Cleveland Indians fan, so we had to take a break to play catch. He said that Americans like to work too much.

He has been trimming the willows in his yard. He demonstrated a Hungarian "dowsing rod" using a forked willow branch to find underground water flow for digging wells or for making sure the ground isn't so wet that it will cause building problems. He says if the rod is held gently with the tips of the fingers like holding fishing line while you fish, you can feel the rod twitching like when a fish nibbles on your bait. When he found the underground flow of water in one corner of his yard, he had us try to see if we could feel it, much like passing a magnet over a hidden nail in a wall.