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the Prairie Crocus – symbol of persistence

One of the first flowers I have a memory of feeling something special for is the simple, unassuming – prairie crocus.

I grew up on a military base in northern Alberta. Our house backed onto a field with woods bordering it, so as children we spent a lotta time playing in those woods, especially in the summer. We had a spattering of wild blueberries, even wild strawberries and raspberries, and we had wild flowers: roses, tiger lilies, crocuses and all sorts of other native plants that I didn’t know the name of. When I got older and a little more interested in native plants, I could identify yarrow, kinnikinnick, labrador tea, hyssop and a few others in ‘my’ woods where I would often waunder looking for plants I could call by name. But I have some big regrets related to those tiger lilies and crocuses. When I was a child I’d go out looking for flowers to pick for the purpose of putting in a cup of water on our table. I fear I was part of their near elimination in those wild areas near our home. I still love flowers, but I grow the ones I put on my table these days, rather than forage for them. I wish I knew then what I know now – enjoy them, but leave them where they are.

The wild crocus is not the most beautiful flower, nothing ostentatious or pretentious about her. She’s happy simply being herself, doing what she was designed to do – which apparently was not to “impress” us with her flamboyance. But her very appearance told me that “spring was finally here”, that “hope” had returned. She encouraged me not to be fooled by a cold snap or a spring snow storm – if the crocuses were out, I could know that winter was over. I could count on it. To this day – I am buffered against those empty threats by my memory of the brave little crocuses that would poke their pretty heads out of a fresh snow. They give me the confidence to say “Give it all you got Winter! You don’t scare me! We both know your days are numbered.”

Crocuses don’t make big announcements – you can look closely in all the same areas you saw them last year for some sign that they’re there, and then suddenly, before your very eyes, THREE OF THEM! Like girlfriends – always hanging out in clusters. One day there is nothing, and seemingly over night they’re in full bloom! Humble and yet stalwart. Warm and friendly, yet tough as a Canadian winter. Crocuses in snow and cold are resilient, they are the poster child for “persistence”; the foliage is cold-durable and can persist under a thick blanket of spring snow. Even if some dumb little kid picks they’re brand new blossoms – don’t despair, they’ll come back next spring. They’re forgiving that way, and – persistent. I’m sure there’s a life lesson for me in there somewhere.

They’ve become quite the symbol for me: persistent, trust-worthy, patient, long suffering. They’re not quitters. Extreme cold can damage crocus blossoms that are already open but will not affect the bulb or future flowers. Another life lesson: “Your past doesn’t determine your future.” When dahlias cry and give up, crocuses come back next year – bringing friends with them.

The crocuses we grow in our gardens now are not the native prairie crocuses I grew up with. The ones we buy are imported and from the iris family, they can be planted in full sun or partial shade. I don’t wish to sound disparaging about them; just because they aren’t purists doesn’t mean they don’t have value. They are still the same cheerful, encouraging sports, and are still among the earliest small, spring flowers – with the same cheery message about spring. They like to hang out in clusters, and you can still count on them. They’re brighter than their country cousins, wearing the vibrant Easter-egg colours of purple, lavender, yellow, cream and white, attracting and providing an important food source for the earliest bees of spring, who are drawn to their rich, golden pollen. Often their cheery blossoms will be open while there’s still snow on the ground, and in time their bulbs1 will multiply to produce more flowers. Because they bloom and die back before most trees and shrubs have even leafed out, areas that might be shaded later in the season, are still hospitable. 2

They are winter hardy in zones 3-8, and bloom best after a cold winter (generally that means 10 weeks of freezing), which makes them perfectly suited to the area I live in. 3 They’re forgiving, but they need well drained soil (they don’t like to be soggy). Plant a few handfuls of bulbs pointy end up, about three to four inches deep (yes I know, that’s DEEP) in the fall before freeze up. Tuck them into your flower beds, around rocks or along a walkway, keeping them to the front where they’ll be seen better because they’re short. They’re very social, and will be happier planted in clumps (just like you’d find them in the wild), filling your garden with flowers when you need them most before anybody else is awake. But don’t worry, after blooming they’ll fade away and make room for late spring flowers – the perfect room mates: respectful of your space, and charitable.

Persistence is essential to happiness; I’m convinced of it. And happiness is not situational, not dependent on sunshine and roses. Crocuses live by the motto “if you can’t change your circumstances, . . . change your outlook“. 4 They always see the sun notwithstanding the snow that surrounds them today. They don’t just survive in the snow – they thrive in the snow. And they thrive when the snow goes too. They’re okay either way. Another life lesson from crocuses.

Know what got me thinking about crocuses this week? I came across a quote in a book I was reading and it jumped out at me. It spoke to my heart, about persistence. Nothing fancy and spectacular – just good old fashioned, hardy “persistence”. Profoundly simple. “Press on” it said. Just what I needed to hear. I had a visual flashback to a small cluster of crocuses, on the edge of a field, surrounded by snow. I couldn’t have been older than 10 or 11 years, but I was struck by how out of place they were. Nothing else had woken up; even the nearby trees hadn’t budded out yet, but here they were! At first I thought they’d made a mistake; the recent spring snow must have surprised them. My older friend told me they were called ‘crocuses’, and that they grew very early in the spring, sometimes even with snow still on the ground. I felt some sort of kinship with them immediately.

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common that unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan PRESS ON has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” – Calvin Coolidge

Crocuses inspire me. They don’t demand instant success. They appreciate the time, effort and sacrifice that go into success and they’re willing to go the distance, but they focus on what they do best – their job – trusting in the process. You could say they’re ACTION oriented – not focused on hoped-for results that are beyond anyone’s ability to control – no matter how well we do our job. Crocuses get that. They simply focus on the job at hand, going about making the world a better place, blooming where they are. The truth is, sometimes things happen: the winter is weird or some dumb kid picks their first-day flowers – but they Press On, continuing to do the right thing – being them, making sure they’re where they’re supposed to be when we most need to see them. They’re kind of a super hero that way; a quiet, unassuming – super hero, too shy to take the lime light, just doing what they’re wired to do. Ironically, most of their job is beneath the surface not readily apparent to the rest of us, getting things ready for their chance to say “Good Morning!“.

I would like to be like the prairie crocus. In the snow – brightening up someone’s day, reassuring them that no matter what else is going on – winter has fulfilled its job, and for all intents and purposes – is over! Spring is up ahead, just around the corner

Thank you to the sweet, humble prairie crocus for this other, important life lesson.

Warmly,

Cindy Suelzle

footnotes:

  1. their ‘bulbs are actually called “corms” ↩︎
  2. Prairie Crocuses have thick, woody taproots which make them difficult to transplant from the wild (so don’t risk killing one to try it), however, they’re fairly easy to grow from seed. If you want to grow a native prairie crocus, gather some seed and do it the more sure way. You can also contact your local chapter of ALBERTA NATIVE PLANTS SOCIETY, they probably have seeds to sell. Or just buy the non-native seedlings from your local greenhouse. ↩︎
  3. if you don’t know what ZONE you’re in, click this link. To provide some context, Edmonton is in its own little zone – considered 3b-4a. ↩︎
  4. Michelle McCullough – MAKE IT HAPPEN BLUEPRINT, pg 73 ↩︎

Find your growing zone.

Edmonton and the surrounding areas are in a unique micro-climate that puts them in a zone (4a) almost to themselves.

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the RULE of THREE in a Financial Freeze: Shelter

WHAT IF?

Playing the game of “What if?” can start to seem pretty real when the scenarios play out in the daily news. Here’s our current scenario – Financial Freeze: an economic downturn that hits hard, causing widespread unemployment and increased financial strain, especially with winter heating bills creeping up.

So – let’s talk about the potential of a financial down turn – the likes of what we saw in Alberta in the mid 1980’s. That’s still pretty fresh in my mind because that was when we lost our house. Actually, to be more precise – we didn’t lose it like so many others did at the time. We sold it in the 11th hour, for barely more than than what we owed on it – which was considerably more than what we paid for it six years prior. We owed more on it than we paid in 1979, because nearly a year after Dan was laid off from his job, and after a plan to go into business with our brother in law didn’t work out, with Dan looking for work and taking every side job he could find to bring in cash – we finally couldn’t make the mortgage payments anymore. So we didn’t. Interest multiplied, and what we owed added up.

We hadn’t seen this coming; a year before, it seemed Dan’s job was secure and he enjoyed it. Life was comfortable. We had three wonderful kids, had been fixing up our home as we could afford it, and were finding our way in the world. I picked up a few side jobs to bring additional money in; things were tight, but alright. And then suddenly, nothing looked the same; it was complicated and uncertain. We didn’t have much, or (thankfully), owe much at the time so the stress was mostly from not knowing what to do. At length we decided Dan needed to go back to school, which meant leaving our little house in Calmar and moving back into the city – temporarily we hoped. We put the house up for sale, and made plans to move as soon as possible. Dan got a part time job driving for Edmonton Transit that would work well around his class schedule at NAIT, we applied for subsidized housing in the city. We desperately didn’t want the complications involved with losing the house to the bank, and prayed earnestly for a buyer as we moved ahead with our plans. We did our best to live the gospel – being active in our church, faithful that God was in the details and trying to do all we could to meet our financial obligations. It was a trial – the biggest we’d had up to that point, and though we felt we were being tested, we never felt abandoned.

Two weeks before our scheduled move, a buyer came forward – making an offer slightly more than what we currently owed. The interest we had been paying on our mortgage was 10,5% A good rate at the time, almost half of what Dan’s dad locked into for five years. Not surprisingly he lost his house before those five years were up. By the time all the details were settled and additional fees were taken care of, we walked away with $42 more than what we paid the bank. We considered that no small miracle, and basked in the goodness of God for months afterward (and to this day) as we reflected on how much worse it could have been. We did our best to DO OUR BEST, and we knew that God knew it. He is our loving Heavenly Father, and He knew the desires of our hearts. He told us that “I the Lord am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.” [D&C 82:10] We trusted Him. It seemed that while we went through those two years leading up to our leaving Calmar we’d been protected from being able to see the bigger picture. We’d been so involved in the micro picture of day-to-day life without employment and getting through one week at a time, that we didn’t have time to be scared, and to truly FEEL the ramifications of how life defining this time was to become for us. It became a life lesson that altered many things we did from that time forward. It was a tender mercy to us that we didn’t know the end from the beginning, or the fine print in-between – so we simply walked by faith.

Flash forward to this week February 5-11, 2024 – in the Preparedness Group I am part of “We’re All in This Together“, we are living with the hypothetical, but very plausible challenge of a Financial Freeze – a veritable “storm of economic struggle causing widespread unemployment and increased financial strain.” Huh. Imagine that.

We moved into Edmonton April 1, 1985. 1712 17 avenue, a townhouse in a subsidized small housing complex across the street from the elementary school our two older children would attend. Dan started working for ETS a few weeks before. We planted a vegetable garden in Dan’s mom’s backyard – within walking distance. Dan started school in September, our fourth baby (another son) was born in October. I’m not going to say things were easy (they weren’t) – but they were comfortable. We did our best to do our best. We made friends, we worked hard, we paid our tithing, our bills and avoided debt. We enjoyed good health, we obeyed the sabbath – there were times Dan had to work on Sundays, but he never did school work on Sundays. We put what little money we could manage away. In our second year, Dan had to let his job go and we took out a student loan. He started applying for jobs in January 1987 – hoping to walk out of class and into a job at the end of the term. It didn’t happen that way. It took till the end of the summer before he found employment in his chosen field. Immediately, we began looking for a house to buy. During the time we struggled with our loss, and re-entry into the work force, many other Albertans were doing the same thing. Many had walked away from their houses – letting them go because they simply couldn’t make the payments anymore. Using the money we saved to make the necessary small down payment, we moved into a small affordable house that sold for considerably less than the sellers had paid for it, but they were moving on to another house, and needed the sale. Generally with real estate, if you sell low you buy low, if you sell high, you buy high. They sold low, and we benefitted. We moved in on the Halloween weekend of that year; the weather was in our favour – staying mild till we were completely moved in. Funny how you remember stupid little details like that. We were very grateful and received plenty of help from ward members in the move. It was a happy day to be in our own home again.

📌 Reviewing the Rule of Three – the big one in this scenario for me is definitely SHELTER.
In our society, it is too easy to take some things for granted – like shelter. And yet, a conservative estimate of people without homes in Edmonton is currently well over 3000 – according to an article in the Edmonton Journal January 12, 2024. In a winter city! It is difficult to try to imagine what that might FEEL like, unless one truly has experienced it. I am so grateful not to have experienced it.

Right now Alberta is again going through a “storm of economic challenge causing widespread unemployment and increased financial strain“, and again people are struggling with housing. It seems the more things change, the more things stay the same. Some very dear friends who were renting a house in Edmonton, were recently given the unexpected news that due to his mortgage coming due, and the increased rate, their landlord had decided to sell the house they were living in. Suddenly they were scouring the market looking for anything affordable. Quite literally, in the few weeks they had – they could find nothing to accommodate them at a price they could afford. My friend told me “In all the efforts of trying to be prepared for an emergency, we hadn’t considered being houseless.” It was a sobering reality for me to listen to. Fortunately for them, a relative had an older small house empty, in a small town seven hours away. They packed up their belongings, left their jobs and their local family members and moved into it, to try to formulate a plan of what to do next. What. to. do. next?

This scenario is REAL for a lot of people. Without jobs in a very small town – with zero employment potential, how long can one continue to pay rent? – even if it is lower than in the city? And in the city with inadequate employment at best, how does one pay rent?

I’m not pretending to have any answers – the problem of affordable housing in our province (and country) is dismal, and we as a people need to start considering alternative ways to adjust. One such way may be multi generational family homes. Its a departure from what our society has become accustomed to in the last fifty or more years, but we see examples of three generation living situations around us all the time, mostly among newcomers to Canada. Perhaps we can learn some lessons from them. Perhaps we may need to.

For nearly eight years, my elderly mother has lived in our home, and yes there have been plenty of adjustments – on all parts. But all in all, it has been a good thing and we’re happy to be able to provide a safe home for her, for as long as that is possible.

In the year 2000, we owned a bookstore. We had just recently – after four years without a wage, putting every dime back into it and in paying off a bank loan – turned a corner and I began drawing a small wage from it. One year before then, we bought a house that we hoped we’d stay in till we died. With no expectation that it was coming – Dan got laid off. His position was dissolved and we suddenly found ourselves on strangely familiar ground. We truly believed he would eventually retire from that job. It took a few days to process it enough to be able to call our family together and tell them our news. Our oldest son was 22, our youngest was 10.

We had recently taken measures to follow prophetic counsel to “get out of debt”. We worked to pay off remaining credit cards and any other obligations we had. We had adjusted our spending to stay within our means, promising each other above all – that we would avoid future debt. I recall it had been important to us at the time, and we had felt an urgency to do so. Imagine our relief (and gratitude) that we had obeyed that counsel, as here we sat in the living room telling much bigger our kids what was going on.

Some of them asked fair questions: What does this mean? What is it going to look like?

We were happy to say “Except for this house, we owe no money. We have no credit card debt. If we did, we would be in SERIOUS trouble. If we’re careful, we should be able to ride this out in a way that won’t feel much different from our current day to day living, for as long as it takes Dad to find a job again.” I cannot verbalize how reassuring that was to be able to say that to our children. I cannot tell you how relieved we were to have taken the steps necessary to be able to say them. “The most important thing in our life at this time” we told them, “is THIS HOUSE! We cannot. lose. this house. Every effort will be dedicated to keeping this house safe.”

We knew first hand what it was like to lose a house, and we were determined to not go through that twice. It was clear to us, if we did lose the house – we would likely never recover from it. That was October. It’s a full time job looking for a full time job, and it went on a lot longer than we expected it to. Who knew? I recall saying aloud to whoever was near enough to hear – several time during those months “Who could have guessed this would go on as long as it has? There is no doubt in my mind, that if we had had credit card debt, we would have lost this house.”

The years that followed were difficult years – mostly emotionally. Dan was older and getting back into his profession proved harder than we expected. He had ‘specialized’ for too long, and his field of expertise was too specific, not currently marketable. It became evident that his career as he knew it, was over; he began looking elsewhere and finally took a temporary retail job to re-enter the workforce. The pay was inadequate, but our resources were running low and any money was money. In retrospect, it was the most difficult trial of our life together up till that point, and repercussions went on for years. We continued to be grateful for prophetic counsel to get out of debt. We were grateful for our commitment to follow that counsel – which ultimately saved us much unnecessary grief. It was hard enough without the extra pain that could have accompanied consumer debt. We were grateful for the promises that come with paying tithing. We learned empathy in a way that we never could have learned any other way. We felt we had been resourceful, but we learned to be more resourceful. Our kids – most of them being old enough to remember – came out of that time with a healthy respect for the dangers of credit card debt.

Truth is – as hard as those years were, I am glad for them, and would gladly re-do them for the lessons we learned, particularly for the lessons our kids learned – life lessons that they were able to learn from an arm’s length. Close enough, but not too close. I used to tell them “Don’t remake our mistakes. Make your own. Otherwise, you’re wasting them, and what a waste of time that would be.” If we would all follow the wise counsel of prophets, and learn from the experience of others, we might save ourselves grief that doesn’t need to be.

With the Rule of 3 in mind, specifically SHELTER –
consider the circumstances of the many people without houses right now.  In any season that’s a tragedy, but in winter in a city like ours its unthinkable. There are things we can do to ease the burdens of others; agencies we can serve with and donate to.
Ask yourself:
“Have I done any good in the world today? Have I helped anyone in need?
Have I cheered up the sad? and made someone feel glad?
If not, I have failed indeed.
Has anyone’s burden been lighter today because I was willing to share?
Have the sick and the weary been helped on their way?
When they needed my helped was I there?”
– Will L. Thompson

What is your plan to prepare yourself against any possibility of losing SHELTER for your family?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Warmly,

Cindy Suelzle

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Community CONNECTIONS – being a good neighbour in a water shortage

This week – coincidentally and conveniently, to coincide with a scenario in a Preparedness Group I’m part of – Edmonton and area cooperated by having a minor emergency that required citizens to step up and voluntarily reduce their normal water usage. The scenario we are living with at the time of this writing is WATER shortage. And as luck would have it, as we’re wrapping it up, a major pump in the water treatment plant shut down. While it is being repaired water availability to over a million homes and business became a worry. Fortunately, people responded well and there seemed to be an over all spirit of cooperation. Also fortunately, the problem is expected to be resolved in about a week – about as long as people’s patience could reasonably be expected to last.

To my knowledge, the situation never developed into an emergency or crises, but sometimes the transition can be over a very fine line, and the general public probably would never know how close we may have come to that. While it’s true that people often come together in an emergency, it is also true that patience can be stretched as time goes on, and good natures become less so, as inconveniences turn into real struggles. The line between selfless and selfish becomes blurred and everyone justifies their own focus on self.

I’m glad we didn’t go there – but on the other hand, as I write this, the situation hasn’t been resolved so we’re still yet to see how it ends.

This time of year in Edmonton, we generally have quite a bit of snow on the ground, and snow can be melted to provide water. But currently we have very little snow in our city, even our own backyard has hardly any snow after many days of melting temperatures. Things we might have counted on in the past, let us down this winter.

Having water storage is absolutely critical, and all must take this seriously. If our only source of drinkable or useable water comes from our taps, we can be in serious trouble with zero notice. Depending on our living situation – farms, acreages, rural, urban, single family dwellings, multi family complexes, apartments . . . we can all store something. Even if we’re only talking about an extra case of bottled water, a few extra cooler bottles, or a few jugs of water in the back of a closet, . . . everyone can and should do SOMETHING to store water.

When I was young I couldn’t even imagine a need for conserving water. It seemed like ‘air’ to me – constantly available, and I believed it should be FREE – for everyone. My father had a different outlook. He well remembered hauling water into the house as a young man to use for drinking, cooking, bathing, cleaning and laundry. I recall my gramma saying she used to feel bad for the boys especially on laundry day and she was very conscious to never waste a drop because they worked so hard to bring her the water. They pumped their water from a well in their backyard. Even as an adult living on a military base where we didn’t pay for water and it was in constant supply, he couldn’t break the habit of conservative water use. I love this quote from Benjamin Franklin. 300 years later, we’re still THAT close – whether we realize it or not . . . “When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water.”

Not wasting water is now a social responsibility. We recognize that clean water is not an inexhaustible resource, and it is a privilege that few in this world actually enjoy. In most cases, the water we rely on – especially in urban areas, is 100% dependent on systems you and I cannot control. Depending on someone else to fix our lack of planning problem is shortsighted and irresponsible, but at the same time we must be aware of those around us who are more vulnerable.

I don’t pretend to have the answers – but there should be some degree of responsibility we feel to help our neighbours.
We can start by getting to know them. Putting faces to names and sharing experiences with people in our neighbourhoods, humanizes them to us, and us to them. We naturally feel more desire to help those we know and recognize, than those we do not. Part of feeling part of a neighbourhood is that neighbours help neighbours.

I am completely against being neighbour natzis, and I hated the reports we heard during Covid about neighbours finking on neighbours and being afraid of neighbours. There is however, a certain degree of public accountability that can be positive when we’re all in this boat together. We’re a little less likely to water our lawns or wash our vehicles when we’re on a water advisory – because doing so would be visible, and we can expect some disapproval from our neighbours for doing so. Peer pressure isn’t always a bad thing – just sayin’ . . . .

We have EQUAL responsibility to use water resources wisely, and equal accountability for doing so. We have equal rights, and should have equal privileges.

Share Your Ideas:

Comment Below: Share your thoughts about how having strong community connections might help us with a prolonged water shortage.
Inspire Others:  Share ways you can make your neighbourhood a better place for you living in it?
Charity:  How can we help a neighbour when faced with a water shortage that affects us all?
Remember: preparedness can be a community effort! 🌟 By collaborating and sharing knowledge, we enhance our collective resilience.

· Now is the time to make a plan and extend the hand of friendship to our neighbours.
· Start with those on either side of us. If we don’t know their names yet – LEARN their names, and two more facts about them.
· Then reach out to those on the other side of each of them, and those across from us. LEARN their names and two facts about them. Make it a game to accomplish these goals, and then continue on with those on the other side of them, and so on.

Warmly,

Cindy Suelzle

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Community CONNECTIONS – good neighbours are an important resource

I think we might agree that Sesame Street was a great neighbourhood to live in; even Oscar was endearing.  But a good neighbourhood doesn’t have to be fictional.  A neighbourhood is made of real people like you and me.  And yes, each one may even have an Oscar, and its even possible he or she may not want to ‘partake’ of whatever you’re offering.  That’s okay.  He can do him, but that doesn’t mean others can’t enjoy the spirit of ‘community and neighbourliness with or without him. 

Sometimes people really do come together in an emergency or crises, but the better time to start building those relationships is long before – simply by BEING a good neighbour.  How do you do that? 

Here are 8 keys to being a good neighbour

1. Look UP. 
It’s not that hard – simply look up, open your eyes and notice things.  See people coming and going.  Say hello or at least give a wave.  You’re more likely to notice little details with your eyes open and a caring heart.  Perhaps someone could use a wave, or a smile, or a hand, or maybe something more.  Chat a bit in the driveway from time to time.  Chat in the front yard.  Chat with the neighbour down the street when you’re walking the dog. 

2. Smile.
It cannot be overstated – a smile really will make someone’s day better, and yours too. 

3.  Be kind.
Something so simple can really make all the difference.

4. Lend a hand.  Could they use a hand bringing some groceries to the door?  Would it really put you out if you pitched in?  What about offering to mow their lawn when they go away? 
What about bringing over a quart of homemade soup when you hear someone’s not feeling well?  A loaf of fresh bread?  When you’re shoveling your sidewalk, how difficult would it be to simply go a little further and shovel your neighbour’s.   

5. Be tolerant.  Not everyone’s gonna do things that way you do.  Your neighbour may have young kids when you don’t, that may mean more noise than you make.  Cool your jets, they won’t stay kids forever.  Your patience with bikes all over the front yard and kids shooting baskets in your driveway will go a long way.  Kids grow up, and those days will end.  It’s a lot easier for your neighbours to be tolerant of you and yours if you extend the same courtesy.  Learn to laugh it off – that’s where funny memories are born. 

6. Invite
Invite them over to sit around a backyard fire.  Invite them for dinner.  Invite them to go for a walk. Host a neighbourhood party. 

7. Work together.

Many years ago Dan decided it would be a helpful thing to have a snow blower, we live in a crescent and the snow plows rarely come into crescents.  But the half dozen times we might use it in a year hardly seemed worth the price.  But IF we could share that cost with others . . . he spoke with some neighbours, and four of us bought one together – with a few simple ground rules.  Still using it.  Still a good experience. 

The border between our front lawn and our neighbours front lawn is vague – so for nearly the whole time we’ve lived here, whoever mows the lawn – mows both.  Such a simple service – takes an extra five minutes, and both of us always have a mowed front lawn. When I do for walks and see front lawns with an obvious mowed border, I am always surprised. Such a small effort to make both yards look nicer and extend that hand of friendship and service.

8. Keep your house and yard neat and tidy.  No one wants to live beside or across from a slob.  It is respectful to your neighbours to take care of your property.  When we first moved back to the city many years ago, for Dan to go back to school – we lived in subsidized housing. As soon as the snow melted, we dug our small area of dirt in a sunny spot and planted flowers, some herbs and even a few tomatoes. We lived there for three summers and though we were the only ones that first summer to do so, I noticed that the following summer some of our neighbours planted flowers, and the next year even more did.

Good neighbourhoods don’t just ‘happen’

My husband’s parents lived in a little house in a nice little neighbourhood.  They pretty much stuck to themselves, didn’t much care to get to know their neighbours.   They weren’t rude, they kept their yard tidy.  But they never reached out.  They never offered to lend a hand.  They just did what they did and minded their own business.  In time they got older and needed some help.  We drove an hour one way to mow their lawn when they couldn’t, to rototill their garden, and to do all sorts of little things that we were happy to help them with, but were too far away to be help on the day to day.  I marveled that there wasn’t a single nearby friend, church member, or neighbour that we maybe could have asked for a hand once in a while.   But their wasn’t.  After almost 40 years of living in and around that same general area, there wasn’t anyone they felt comfortable asking a favour of.  Why?  Because they weren’t really “good neighbours” themselves.  

Good neighbourhoods just don’t happen on their own.  They’re not magic like that.
Being a good neighbour is the building block of a good and friendly neighbourhood.  That doesn’t mean we have to all be the same, just be nice. 
Good neighbours watch out for each other. 
Good neighbours keep an eye on each other’s property when they’re away.
Good neighbours care about each other.
When emergencies happen, good neighbours pitch in and help each other through it, and THEREIN LIES THE KEY TO THIS CONVERSATION. 

You cannot live in a ‘good’ neighbourhood if you’re not a good neighbour.  It doesn’t work that way.  And you may think you don’t need your neighbours – until you fall on your icy sidewalk, or someone breaks into your house, or your spouse has a heart attack, or your house is on fire,
 . . . . or when any number of other reasonable and perfectly normal scenarios happen. 

Being a good neighbour is important for everyone because it makes good neighbourhoods. 
It means safety, a sense of belonging, a helping hand, purpose, charity, empathy and friendship.  It takes TIME, investment, kindness, charity, empathy and friendship.    

Share Your Ideas:

I’d love to hear your thoughts about how having strong community connections helps us, and ways you might make neighbourhood a better place. After all, WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.

Now is the time to extend the hand of friendship to our neighbours – and yes, I even mean the ‘Oscar’ on your street. We can start with those who live on either side of us. If we don’t know their names yet, LEARN their names and two facts about them. Then reach out to those on the other side of each of them, and those across from us. Learn THEIR names and two facts about them. Make it a game to accomplish these goals, and then continue on with those on the other side of them, and so on.

Warmly,

Cindy Suelzle