The guerrilla gardener infiltrates the southeast corner of Pape and Cosburn Avenues to tend to the tiny garden he has adopted at Bethany Baptist Church. As camouflage, he wears his Eddie Bauer relaxed-fit jeans, Mark’s hiking boots, a short-sleeve shirt and a brown Bruce County Plowing Match ball cap. Nobody will bother him. He is the invisible man who weeds and waters the flowers and shrubs, and has mended the brick perimeter surrounding the garden.

From a green plastic watering can, he douses the pot of geraniums and some of the existing hostas and other perennials that are now bursting from the soil as spring turns to summer. He cleans up a few pop cans and candy bar wrappers littering the garden and deposits them in the city garbage container next to the bus stop.

But today is not ideal for covert gardening action. Hundreds of people have gathered for the church’s weekly food bank. They’re lined up on a hot afternoon for several hundred yards along the south side of Cosburn Avenue, a street of rental apartments in Toronto’s east end.

Food bank volunteers have set up a series of kiosks, organizing the donated food by categories including pasta and dry goods, juice and other drinks, and what appears to be a small hot-lunch area. The food bank recipients are in line according to family size, with the biggest families first.

Some volunteers have tossed empty cardboards boxes on top of several shrubs the guerrilla gardener has been nurturing. Gah! But this is no time to by picky. It’s time to observe a community organization and its volunteers in action — serving people in need.

Volunteers cruise the line to chat with recipients, check registrations and answer questions. Others dole out food. The Thursday food bank operates year-round at the church, in the blistering heat of the summer and deep freeze of the Canadian winter. The 103-year-old organization also hustles to deliver online services and youth programs during the pandemic.

The guerrilla gardener will be patient, bide his time, and make contact with the organization to find out more. And he will be back regularly — to nurture the geraniums and shrubs.