I Am Grateful to Live in Abundance

This morning I got up early (no small feat for this night owl!) and headed to Escondido with the bf to pick oranges with San Diego Food Not Lawns. I want to give a big Gratitude Shout Out to Esta Browning, an awesome friend I met through my volunteer work with Help the Homeless, who posted the picking event on her Facebook, which is why I got to be involved today.

SD Food Not Lawns is an organization started about a year ago which tries to match up otherwise-unharvested fruit from the thousands of trees on private property in Southern California with food banks, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, or any other worthy cause that can use them. Many properties down here have more trees than the owners can possibly eat the fruit from. Almost everyone knows *someone* that shares fruit from their fruit trees. Not letting the rest of it go to waste is a truly noble cause. I've often said myself that if we can FedEx a package anywhere overnight, why can't we send food that normally goes to waste here in the US to the countries with starving populations?

Mother Earth provides us with everything we need. And because we have evolved to such a point (much to the detriment of our planet to boot!) that we can move products around the globe in 24 hours, we are now responsible (and have NO excuse) not to be able to spread the abundance from one area to another.

With that thought in mind, it's TOTALLY cool how every time I put something out there to the Universe, it answers me almost immediately. My friend S, whom I dog sit for every now and again, has about 100 grapefruit and orange trees on her property. They only have them because they came with the house. As far as I know, they don't do anything to support the trees other than give them water so they don't die. They pick the fruit for as many friends and family and neighbors as they can, but a TON of it goes to waste. 100 trees produce A LOT of fruit!

The last time I was up there letting the dogs out, I was discussing with a different friend what a waste it is for all that fruit to just drop and rot. We brought a bunch home as I know we're allowed to, but we can't possibly eat our way through the orchard. Having just been on my weekend trip downtown for Help the Homeless, it occurred to me that taking a bunch of that fruit with me next time might be awesome. That thought naturally led to thinking about how appreciated that fruit might be at soup kitchens and shelters across the county.

Lo and behold, Esta posted the link mentioned above like a day or two later! They match up otherwise-unharvested trees with those that can benefit from the food. How COOL is that?!! Gotta love synchronicity.

Note: I probably intended to write something more for this post, but never finished it. It was in draft format when I found it but since it sort of appears to be a complete thought anyway, I'm just posting it so it stops telling me I have all these drafts! Can't have a drafty blog!