One Fine Day

Actually, two, but we'll focus on one.

We're approaching our one-year anniversary of living in Bannockburn, a former cooperative neighborhood that still maintains a strong sense of community.

Today was the first annual community clean-up day. All around the neighborhood, people came out with yard bags, clippers, mowers, etc. and "beautified" the common areas of the neighborhood.

For us here on Owen Place, that meant the stretch of landscape on the other side of the street. (Houses are only on one side.)

I spent four hours with neighbors with whom, prior to today, I'd only exchanged brief greetings. As we we pulled out ivy (including the poisoned kind) and bagged weeds, we learned of the origins of names, what drew us to this particular community, the story of a lost family turtle... you know, that kinda stuff.

In the process, we discovered lovely plants hidden under the ivy, commonality we didn't know about before, passions and cares. All that while pulling weeds.

Who knew?

And after... we celebrated with a pot luck where we got to know even more about each other. The history of this amazing little community. The intentionality that while not exactly as it was, still persists in little ways.

All this because someone said, hey, let's organize a community clean-up day. And it happened.

I love this place.