Vegetables are things my daughter never ate from age six months to her current age of twenty six. While vegetables today are more popular, zucchini still has a bad rep. It manifests itself as sneaky, relentless, a non-respecter of boundaries, a home invader, and worst of all, a porch finder!  But there is hope, and even a pathway to joyous living if you are a zucchini grower.

My name is Sherry, and I grow zucchini. On the third day of creation, God created plants.  I know God created zucchini and therefore I accept it as potentially good. Weirdly, I do see similarities to finding peace in a chaotic world to growing zucchini. (Next novel: Zucchini, The Scary Vegetable.)

• • Zucchini must be planted. Seeds cost money. Recently we had the opportunity to change a life by spending $284.50 to help a young person find transitional housing so he would not be homeless. A small price to buy peace for one homeless person.

• • Zucchini must be picked at the right moment, or it gets tough and hard to use. Do we use the right moment to bless others?  Recently I was in the long coffee drive-thru line, and found that the person ahead of me paid for my coffee.  So I paid for the person behind me.  Pick your moment.

• • Zucchini can be an invader in the garden and take over ground not assigned to it. I admit sometimes to seeing my position in life as more important than others. Today someone cut me off in traffic. I wanted to do many things, but I continued my driving without incident, and reveled in the fact that is something my husband could never do!

• • But some people like zucchini, and ask for it. I find when my abundance of zucchini has outstripped my ability to find empty porches to deposit them on, I need to find someone who needs zucchini. Can we find those around us in need? I carry in my car a “sad bag.” When I was trying to explain what a person begging on the side of the road was to my five year old granddaughter she said, “Oh that’s just a sad person grandma.”  So we went home and made up bags with toiletries, candy, water bottles and a personal note of love stapled to a $5 bill. We call them “Sad Bags” and share them with anyone we see begging on the road. It does not meet the need of their life, but can meet a need that day.

Make sharing joy a habit, and it will come back to you, just as zucchini sometimes come back from seeds sown long ago.