Give A Man A Fish

Hopefully everyone has heard this saying, "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and he will eat for life." Over my life I have always tried to follow that kind of idealism. The other day, since it was 95 outside and I stayed home in the apartment, I noticed a nieghbor starting a garden. They had never had a garden before so I watched for a while. The plot she made was about 10x20 with about 80% sunlight for a day. I thought, not a bad location.
What came next disturbed me and I knew I had to teach her to fish. The dirt within the plot looked terrible even after she had dug up the area twice, going deep and breaking clumps up. I dug out a couple magazines and a gardening book all that emphisized on garden start-up and took them over to her. We did not know each other personnally, it was more of a hey how you doing kind of relationship, but she was interested in talking about what she was doing.
We sat at her picnic table and talked for quite some time and she was very receptive. I explained to her about dirt, compost, sun, watering and all else I could think about. I drew up a quick plan so she could build a drum composter and since her house was small apartments I told her to ask her tenents to save her all their compostable items.
When all was done she was very happy and I could see the wheels turning in her head. I told her this year mainly dress the surface of the garden with compost and compost tea but in the fall and next spring dig it in deep and her garden will be much better next year. I gave her my number and left making a new friend and a new gardener. If we all did this with one person we could have food that is so much better to eat and more people being friends.