A Rice Pot In the Sun

Rice cooking in a solar oven, Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn

Here's one simple truth about gardening or walking in a public garden: you will see something amazing on any given day. Whether you are keeping an eye out for pollinators while weeding around the tomatoes, admiring the sweet potential of a flower bud about to open, or watching seedheads of certain perennials brown in the fall, no matter the season, if your eyes are open you will see something staggeringly beautiful. That may seem like an exaggeration, but any gardener or lover of gardens will tell you that it is not.

If you are lucky to garden in a place alongside other people, in a community of gardeners, you might even find yourself coming upon a pot of rice in the sun, cooking slowly in a handmade solar oven, and you may declare it the most amazing garden discovery of a bright summer day. Sue and Judy might not be done tinkering with the new oven and the process, but we tasted the rice and it was good.