An
Interview with Patrick
by Gayane Grigorian
The night before my interview I slept badly, but we were on time. When we met Patrick it seemed to us that we knew him a long time. He was an absolutely frank and positive person.
In meeting Patrick, we met one more fair, noble-minded person in America.
Meeting Gretchen
Yuki Zhao
Gretchen is a young woman gardener who has two
kids. When I met her, my first impression of her was healthy
skin, a broad smile and kinetic energy. She is a really charming person.
Gretchen’s hometown is Minneapolis, Minnesota.
She grew up on her grandmother’s big farm, but now she is living in a Brookline
apartment with no outdoor space. Because Gretchen was eager to find a space to garden
somewhere close by, she went to the Garden Sharing Workshop at Bountiful
Brookline’s “Spring into Gardening” event where she met Peggy. Peggy is a garden
mentor who wanted to share her garden with someone. Gretchen not only got an
opportunity to garden, but also started to know more of her neighbors.
Because
this is an organic garden and no chemicals are allowed, they set up a home
compost. Many kinds of vegetables, fruits and herbs were planted in the garden.
Eggplants, lettuce, kale, peppers, tomatoes, radishes, fava beans and strawberries
were in the back yard garden, and flowers and all kinds of squashes were in the
front yard.
Gretchen told me her favorite vegetable was
peppers. She likes spicy food, such as Chinese Spicy Hot Curd. What a
coincidence! That is my favorite food, too. And even more amazing thing was
that she was an English teacher in the Dalian Institute of Technology in China
when she was 20 years old. My husband graduated from the same college. After
the talk, I felt some wonderful relationship between us.
I hope
I can try to do gardening in the near future. Next week I will try to do
Chinese Spicy Hot Bean Curd for our English class party. This should go without
saying, I will invite Gretchen to join us.