Little gifts - for which I am grateful

I was walking home this afternoon, with my 5 yr old daughter, and she always notices the flats of produce sitting in the driveway of one house in particular. She notices because they usually have fruits she like to eat - like persimmons and pomegranates right now, peaches and grapes in the summer, and more.

Today she pointed out an abundance of pomegranates.

And today I saw a light on in the window of the house.

So I asked her if we should go knock on the door and find out if that fruit is there for people to take if they want.

She timidly asked if we know them. I said no, but we can just knock on the door and say hello and ask about it.

So we did.

A kind woman in her 50s, maybe 60s, greeted us. The house was full of kids - at least 6 of them - which she identified as her grandchildren. We asked her about the fruits and veggies, and she explained to me that her husband simply buys too much when he goes to the shuk, and she can't possibly use it all. She said her husband gives some to some of the families nearby, but there is always such "shefa" (abundance), she doesn't know what to do with it... but she always wonders if there isn't someone around who could truly use it... and then she handed me 4 plastic shopping bags and told me to take whatever I wanted, b'simcha (happily), and to take anytime there is stuff out there.

We thanked her for her generosity, wished her that she should always be in a position to have such shefa to share, and went and picked out produce from the flats. Now bear in mind that they'd been sitting there since at least a day before, and it rained all night and part of the day today. Not everything was in great shape, even though the boxes were under the carport. We had to skip the persimmons as they were all so smushed we couldn't even lift them without making a huge mess.

We found avocados, pomegranates, apples, tomatoes, celery, turnips, dill, onions, cauliflower, pumpkin, and more.

I would take a picture but I already put it away and even served pomegranates, tomatoes, and avocados with supper!

Now, thanks to that family, I think all we need to buy this week will be grape juice and chicken for Shabbat, and some more bags of milk! Which is good, because all those asthmatic and allergic people in my house are running up our kupat cholim charges.

As I've always said, whenever we've looked at a month that we weren't sure what would be, Hashem makes sure it works out. Sometimes it's in the form of an unexpected little job, sometimes it's free groceries. But it always works out.