Scout doing good garden deeds as part of projects

Rarely do people credit the Easter Bunny with making surprise deliveries of fresh, nutritious food.

Chocolate and those marshmallow-y things, yes. Broccoli? Not so much.

The lop-eared furball's doing some good work by association this year, though, through one of his recipients of year's past, 15-year-old David Cord.

David cultivated a plot in Lombard's community garden, organized his troop of Boy Scouts to maintain it over the summer and is donating the bounty to the York Township Food Pantry.

And the idea all started with the vegetable seeds his grandmother gave him each year for Easter throughout his childhood.

Arlene Bentley of Des Plaines faithfully supplied sunflower, pumpkin or tomato seeds each year so her grandson could foster his green thumb. It worked. Whatever she gave him, he grew.

So when it came time for the Willowbrook High School sophomore to begin planning a project for his Eagle Scout badge, his thoughts naturally turned to the familiar.

He also knew food pantries needed donations of produce over the summer months through the Giving Garden program. That's how the Lombard teen wound up at York Township.

The very first week of July, he delivered 24 pounds of food picked from the garden manned by Troop 202 of Faith Methodist Church in Lombard.

Of course, his grandmother does get credit for some of the work.When David and his troop planted the garden in the spring, Bentley was on hand to show them how to transplant seedlings.

To earn the rank of Eagle Scout, David must complete numerous badges but also show he can organize people to tackle a project. So far, 10 members of his troop have volunteered to help him out through the summer.

They come out on a weekly basis to weed and water the garden, he said. When they notice fruit and vegetables ripening, they call David.

"I go out and chop it off," he said, "and drop it off at the food pantry."Initially, he set a goal of raising between 50 and 100 pounds of food for the pantry this summer.

Based on his first week's delivery, he might have to rethink that plan.