How does your garden grow? Just ask Nora Barger.

The lettuce and green beans are past but the tomatoes and corn are at their peak.  Bliss on a summer evening is fresh Silver Queen corn directly from the garden, cooked and dripping with salt and butter, joined by a thinly sliced Better Boy tomato on your dinner plate.  Or perhaps a lunchtime BLT when the rich juices of the tomato provide a creative new design on the front of your shirt.  Yum!

Today Around Davidson stops by to visit with gardeners Ruby and Jimmy Alexander.  We also take time today to introduce our readers to Peter Gross and his family.  (Peter was mentioned in Tuesday’s Around Davidson in connection with the Davidson-in-Ghana program.)  There is also a tidbit about Rebekkah Withers McCurry.

Yum! Ruby and Jimmy Alexander know their corn!

GARDENING IS PART OF THEIR LIVES

It is that time of year.  The corn is ready for picking and Jim and Ruby Alexander have their chairs, bowls and buckets ready.  Mornings they sit outside under the water oak and shuck the corn, saving the husks for Uncle Gene Alexander’s cattle, brushing away the silks, cutting any immature ends and placing finished ears aside.  This teamwork not only shucks corn but shells peas, snaps beans and washes collard greens.

Jimmy and Ruby gardened for decades with his parents, Mildred (now at The Pines) and the late James Alexander.  They plowed and planted the large plot just behind the Alexander home on South Main.  Jimmy and Ruby now tend the garden which seems to prosper regardless of the weather.  Jimmy’s secrets?  An ample dose of 10-10-10 fertilizer, well prepared, plowed soil and beginning planting on Good Friday (unless Easter is VERY early!).  After that there is the hard work of weeding, harvesting, canning and freezing.  Jimmy and Ruby love seeing their pantries and freezers fill up knowing how good the vegetables will taste this winter.

Any of our readers who garden will sympathize with the Alexanders and their battle with deer and squirrels.  The deer do love tomato plants and the squirrels have taken over the corn eating assignment from the raccoons – not to mention the occasional hedgehog eating the beans or the turtles in the cantaloupes.  They sure do know how to plunder the garden.  Jimmy’s secrets to stay ahead of the varmints?  Keep an eye out and harvest a bit early if need be.

(If our readers have great gardening tips, please let us know … especially how to combat those pesky squirrels!)

Peter Gross and his wife, Jessica

THE GROSS FAMILY – MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Thanks to Fuji Lozada we get to catch up with Peter Gross, a Northside Christian Academy graduate, who started his college career at Davidson College by joining Bob McKillop’s basketball team as a “walk-on” but did not continue when the rigors of academics took too much of his time.  Peter graduated from Davidson in 2002 with a major in Classics and is the son of Edith and John Gross of River Run.

After Davidson, he spent a year at Oxford earning a Masters in Divinity and returned to Davidson to marry Jessica Madigan, a Wheaton College graduate, in August 2003.  Moving to Atlanta, Peter pursued an MBA at Emory while Jessica earned a nursing degree and a Masters in Public Health at Emory.  Peter worked in Atlanta for McMaster-Carr while Jessica worked with AmeriCorps.

Peter with Mohammad Yunus, Bangladeshi banker, economist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

All the while the couple was living in inner city Atlanta reaching out to help residents of their neighborhood.  Both Jessica and Peter wanted to work and live in a Third World Country and found the challenges of poverty and health issues of Atlanta a  realistic teaching ground for future jobs.  They live by the old adage:  “Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today.  Teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime.”

Now living in Cape Coast, Ghana, Peter heads a micro-finance office under the guidelines established by Muhammad Yunus who developed the concepts of microcredit and microfinance over a decade ago. (Mr. Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 jointly with Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which he founded.)  Jessica works for the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention.  She is presently promoting health care with government policy in Ghana, Kenya and Zimbabwe.

These young people are making a difference one person or one community at a time.  How often we hear that said of other Davidson residents.  And we certainly can add Peter’s parents to our list.  John and Edith Gross saw first hand in Atlanta how Peter and Jessica could impact inner city youth and decided they would devote time and energy to helping others.

The Grosses now are giving back by participating in the outreach of their Stonebridge Church Community located on Prosperity Church Road.  This church raised over a half-million dollars in two years to build and fund a boarding school for 300 Indian children in 1st through 10th grades.  Joining 24 others, John and Edith traveled to an area near Hyderabad, India, last month to dedicate the buildings of this residential school which will partner with Harvest Ministries there.

Hats off to Jessica and Peter Gross and to Peter’s parents.

Rebekkah Withers McCurry

A TIDBIT FROM THE WEST COAST

Lions take note!  You have a former Davidsonian who is making waves in her Lions Club in Citrus Heights, Calif., near Sacramento.  Rebekkah Withers McCurry has just been installed as the President of the Citrus Heights Lions Club for 2010-2011.  Rebekkah is the daughter of Melissa Withers and the late Rutledge Withers of Davidson.  Her sisters, Kathryn and Sarah, still live here.  Congratulations, Rebekkah.

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Have news for Around Davidson? Write to Brenda Barger at hbarger@bellsouth.net.