How would you improve your community?

DAILY PROMPT RESPONSE

All I knew about flowers was that you gave them to a girl you were sweet on. So, when I met my future wife, I had much to learn. Now, I had no idea that I was going to marry her at the time, but strangest things, right? I spent a great deal of time in her flower garden while we were dating. I don’t know the names of flowers, but I know how deep to plant them or whether they grow in the sun or the shade. As well as how much to water them. You may be wondering what this story has to do with improving my community. Let me explain.

Throughout our marriage, my wife and I planted numerous gardens, indoor and outdoor. The indoor gardens were a challenge, but we pulled it off. Our last garden was our biggest and most challenging garden. In this garden, we planted both vegetables and flowers. Typically, we did either one or the other. However, that’s not what made this garden special. What made this garden stand out was its effect on the neighborhood.

We lived in the shady part of town and there all kinds of madness going on 24 hours a day. The people were decent enough, but no one seemed to care about anything outside their world. We were no different. It was about surviving our circumstances best way we could. My wife’s had begun to progress and one day she said she wanted a garden. I looked at her like she had finally lost her mind. There really wasn’t any place to put the garden she described. She didn’t let it go

Our backyard was nearly completely asphalt, so one morning I stood out there looking at it wondering how we were going to pull this off. I grabbed my pickaxe and went to work. It took me a week to clear the area by hand. It didn’t occur to me to rent a tiller. I just swinging that pickaxe. I tilled the soul with a rack then planted a flower right in the middle of the clearing. I went inside and took a nap in my chair. My wife woke me up and took me to the back and it started.

Over the next few weeks, I had the whole filled with flowers. Here is the interesting part, we went around town and asked people if we could get piece of their flowers. I was surprised when nearly everyone said yes. We did this every year for three years. There were a few ladies who would set aside seedlings for my wife. Others called her when they got something new. I shook my head at this, but would get into the truck and pick stuff up. My wife even nurseries on her rolodex. They’d call each year and donate a plant or two.

One night, one of my dogs alerted me to activity outside. I noticed that a few of the neighborhood yahoos were sitting in the garden. Immediately, I was ready to kick off the property. However, something strange happened. Some trash had blown in the garden, and I watched them get up and clear it up. They kept our garden free of trash. My wife passed and I moved, but for three years they maintained the garden. I received phone calls from my wife’s flower network wondering if I was going to keep things going. I declined and they understood.

Sometimes the littlest things mean so much. I guess that’s what happens when you marry the woman in the house with the pretty flowers.