Did you know I’m the resident photographer for Tallahassee’s Natural Awakenings magazine? Completely true!
In February, the editor called me up to schedule a photo shoot with Nathan, the Man in Overalls. He’s a fantastic guy who is very involved in the community and an educator too! My favorite image of him proudly holding a shovel and bouquet of freshly gathered greens & carrots made the cover and a few of the others made it to the inside article.
When I arrived at Nathan’s I was struck by how many different plants he had growing in the raised beds he built! The most beautiful were the cabbage and carrots.
It wasn’t difficult to capture Nathan’s smile – he’s got to be one of the happiest people I’ve ever met!
Below are the iGrows he built and is promoting for a great cause. From their website: iGrow-Whatever You Like is a Frenchtown-based youth empowerment and urban agriculture project, named and largely run by the youth themselves. The iGrow Youth are responsible for the community garden at Second Harvest Food Bank and for manufacturing iGrow Garden Buckets. They aspire to launch a youth-run urban farm in the Frenchtown Community. iGrow is an initiative of the Tallahassee Food Network.
Store bought tomatoes are too acidic for me so my doctor suggested I start growing my own. I did not, by any means, inherit my mother’s green thumbs. I swear, she just looks at a plant sweetly and it starts to thrive. The only time I actually got anything to grow was when I was doing botany research on roses, flowering kale, and soybeans (and, even then, a slew of them died).
My sweetest of sweethearts went and bought me 2 iGrows with heirloom tomato plants! Right after I finish writing this I’m going to go pick them up (and keep them inside because of the still cool temperatures). These babies are going to do great on my front porch and away from Pumpkin, the family dog who is known to eat everything living.
To learn more about the Tallahassee Food Network and get info on farmers markets, educational events, and how to get involved with your local food community, please visit http://tallahasseefoodnetwork.blogspot.com/. And make sure you pick up a copy of Natural Awakenings the next time you’re in Publix or New Leaf. There’s always fantastic articles and it’s free too! Now, get to planting!
