Donna Freedman's Sowing Change

Gradually, a garden can be a comfort place for a person. It can even bring a community together. Maybe it can also symbolize the meaning to a belief. A garden can benefit the gardener who is growing it or a community that is building one for a good cause. In “Sowing Change” by Donna Freedman, gardens means a lot to the community of North Lawndale, in Chicago. In “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier, a garden full of a few Marigolds means the world to someone. To begin with, the garden the community of North Lawndale, in Chicago, was beneficial to the people in many ways. In “Sowing Change,” by Donna Freedman (Page 424) it says, “It all came together on April 26 when about five dozen volunteers of varying ages, mostly neighborhood residents,

Miss Lottie is this little, brown skin, old lady who looks Native American. All the children in the neighborhood like to annoy her, since she is old, and she can not do anything to stop them because she moves too slow. The children also like to mess up her marigolds. The marigolds Miss Lottie has planted mean everything to her and she tries to protect them as much as she can. This time, Miss Lottie’s garden benefits her because it shows how she has hope. She lives in a dusty, gray neighborhood with her mentally challenged son, during the Great Depression, and the yellow of her flowers show how she tries her best to be happy and continue having hope and faith that things will get better. In “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier (Page 410) it says, “When I think of the hometown of my youth, all that I seem to remember is dust—the brown, crumbly dust of late summer—arid, sterile dust that gets into the eyes and makes them water, gets into the throat and between the toes of bare brown feet.” In the short story, (Page 410) it also says, “And one other thing I remember, another incongruency of memory—a brilliant splash of sunny yellow against the dust—Miss Lottie’s marigolds. Whenever the memory of those marigolds flashes across my mind, a strange nostalgia comes with it and remains long after the picture has faded.” The marigolds are memorable and stand out. Another way Miss Lottie's garden is beneficial is because even though the garden took Lizabeth’s innocence, she now knows what compassion is and what it really means to grow up. Lizabeth is a fourteen-year-old girl who is transitioning into womanhood. She lives in the same poor neighborhood as Miss Lottie with her mother, father, and brother. Lizabeth is one of the children who like to torment Miss Lottie and her flowers. In the short story “Marigolds,” (Page 419) it says, “The