I might have mentioned before that I belong to a community garden in my village of Tangmere. All the members live in the village (more or less) and we come from a wide range of backgrounds and made up of all ages from aged 2 to late sixties, with varying degrees of gardening knowledge. The title of ‘garden’ suggests lots of beautiful flowers and we do grow flowers to attract bees and insects that will help keep the pests at bay, but the prime aim is to grow a variety of vegetables and fruit.
The driving force behind the garden is our ‘leader’ Rosemary Moon http://www.moonbites.info/ who was the instigator and got the whole thing off the ground. Galvanising volunteers into clearing and digging a waste plot of land overgrown with brambles and trampled on by horses to produce the organised vegetable garden we have today.
She is a food writer and activist and very generously holds cookery demonstrations about 6 times a year, in a large house in the village to raise funds for the garden. They are well attended because apart from being a very inventive and great cook she is also very entertaining. She is assisted by another garden member, Angie, who conjures up heavenly and mouth-watering deserts full of naughty things that are bad for you (?) Everyone gets a plate full of tasters at the end and go home very satisfied.
At these events of course after the cooking and eating is quite a lot of washing up and volunteers from the garden are called upon to help out, rewarded with their own plate full of tit bits of food. At our last demonstration at the end of November I offered to get my hands wet, it happened to be the same week I received the delivery of my books. Rosemary suggested I bring some along to the demo and she did a lovely bowl of Village Salad taken from the book to accompany the meal and gave me and the book such a wonderful endorsement I was almost blushing!!!! It was a great evening and I managed to sell a few books which was an added bonus.
Photos courtesy of Lois another member.
Androula's Kitchen - Cyprus on a Plate 
Lovely event, and as I’ve said before, I am slightly envious of the sense of community evoked by this garden. So glad you sold a few books as well, but I think they deserve to have sold out!
Thanks Sarah. It is rather lovely, I feel quite blessed that it is on my doorstep and so do many other members. We have quite a lot of social family events and for me, a single lady with all my family some distance away, it gives me a feeling of ‘family’. The books sales are trickling along here, I still have a lot of marketing to do. But my cousin is doing very well with them in Cyprus, everywhere she shows them people want to buy them. She told me “I wish you could see their faces when they see the book, it is a real look of delight” What a lovely response I feel really chuffed.