Ginger Garden, Forest Love

In the morning, this idea of deeper in leads me through community gardens. In many forest communities, there are shared resources, fruit, community trees and common property. Wandering through the community gardens during a community photography workshop I was leading, I made this one quiet image of these girls harvesting ginger leaves and smiles from one another. I like how during workshops there can be complete chaos (it seems to me): kids can be running, adults are explaining and sometimes talking in excitement, translations are trying to be made, I might have a kid on my shoulders so he or she can photography orchids or forest fruits. But then are these quiet moments too. When everyone is listening. When one person is talking. Or maybe we are just listening to the forest. Or smiling back at one another. It’s nice to be reminded that friendships can be made. And that the workshops that often take a lot of followup can have immediate feedback. With an increasing sense of practicality, I’ve started making sure we bring at least one rattan basket for harvesting forest fruits, roots, shoots, seeds, mushrooms, resins, ubat (medicine), and whatever interesting things we can find.