"I think of Anathoth as a garden created during war and thus a defiant garden. The violence isn’t only in Iraq. [It's in our communities.] It’s inside us. Turning the compost pile with Adele and Taisuke, transplanting a bed of sweet potatoes with Joe and Anthony from Volunteers for Youth -- these are small acts of protest...against the violence within our souls.”
“On its own, gardening will by no means change the world...it’s exactly the uselessness of the gesture, the smallness of it, the discomfort of doing work that is physically demanding, in which the garden finds its strength. Gardening is a “complete action” according to Wendell Berry, because it is an act that is more than symbolic. Gardening is protest but it goes beyond protest and proposes an answer.”
Fred Bahnson, manager of the community garden, “The Field at Anathoth,” in Cedar Grove, North Carolina. Writing in the July-August issue of Orion magazine.
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