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#CaringForCommunity: Inside & Outside

#CaringForCommunity is a blog series that spotlights the work of writers, artists, or your next-door neighbors who, without being asked and without pay, carry the light in simple but meaningful ways. These are people giving back in order to lift others up. Real life examples of compassion, concern, and inspiration.

Inside

The last time I posted on #CaringForCommunity, I mentioned Tricklebee Cafe in Milwaukee, a pay-what-you-can community restaurant that serves organic, locally-sourced food. My husband and I ate there recently, and let’s just say I felt good all around, belly and soul.

For this edition of the blog series, I want to spotlight Curt’s Cafe in Evanston, IL. Curt’s Cafe is a nonprofit organization that runs along a similar philosophy, opening their doors to young people in need of compassion, acceptance, and a place to connect.

“The mission of Curt’s Cafe is to offer job skill and life skill training to highly, highly at-risk young men and young women and help them with those skills, then help them get a job and keep a job. . . . And we don’t turn anyone away, no matter what they’ve done.” ~ Susan Trieschmann, Executive Director

Watch That’s My Child (above, from Small Forces on Vimeo) about Curt’s Cafe. Checkout their website. Better yet, when in Evanston, stop in for a cup of coffee and a dose of kindness.

Outside

After you sip that coffee cup of inspiration, head home, pop a Zyrtec, and get back outside to spread more love. This time in your garden. Rebecca Straus in “Grow These 50 Pollen-Rich Plants to Help Your Local Honeybees” (Organic Life) explains:

It’s no secret honeybee populations are hurting. Colony collapse disorder, which occurs when the majority of worker bees in a hive disappear, abandoning the queen, baby bees, nurse bees, and food, is decimating hives at an astounding rate. And a shortage of honeybees can have a very real impact on our food supply. Farmers who grow crops from strawberries to squash to almonds rely on hives of traveling honeybees to pollinate their fields. No bees means no food.

I like food. So does Tricklebee, so does Curt’s. And you. Consider it #CaringForCommunity in the round, beginning on one tiny city lot and reaching well beyond.

“…one of the easiest steps you can take is to grow more plants that honeybees like to feast on for nectar and pollen. Here are the flowers, shrubs, trees, herbs, and—yes—weeds that will give honeybees (and native pollinators!) a helping hand.”

A little hay fever for a happy beehive? I say, Yes. And I bet there’s a patch of yard within eyesight that could use a little color.

Think coneflower and crocus and pretty, flowering onions.

 

 

 

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Cultivate Your Story

Last Thursday marked a historical moment for me.

I picked up my daughter, for the final time, from a daycare center that has cared for both my kids for the past nine years. As much as my kids, I’ve grown up at that center, and it felt strange to walk away.

I honored the day as most moms do: I brought cupcakes, and I bought a new book as a gift for her classroom. Decorating the cupcakes was easy; choosing the book was difficult.

But, the one I found bestows a message that’s been sitting with me for days.

In The Curious Garden, Peter Brown writes a beautiful story about a boy who discovers a treasure, a tiny garden in an otherwise barren piece of land. With little knowledge about gardening, but a passion to grow something new, this young boy weeds and trims and waters and sings to his little patch of green. The plants come to life, and they begin take root in new places.

Then, winter sets in, and the boy can no longer get to the garden. He doesn’t despair, though. He turns to books on gardening, and, by spring, he is ready: armed with more knowledge and better tools and an even stronger drive to foster his plot into something bigger and more beautiful.

By the book’s end, the small patch of green has flourished and spread, and the boy’s spirit is contagious. I love this book, for everything it represents: nature’s resilience, the fruits of our labor, the persistence of a young boy who knew nothing in the beginning but did the work anyway.

You can see where this is going, right? Walking away from one phase in my daughter’s life pains me, but the message I discovered in the process was worth it. Not only am I extremely grateful for the gifts of knowledge this daycare center, and the teachers, have given me and my kids. But now, I leave there with yet another lesson: cultivate that which you love.

Here I am, trudging my way through this novel writing business, perseverating (some days) on the fact that I have so much to learn about the craft of writing and story structure. But, the passion is there, and my story is taking root and flourishing, little  by little.

What about you? Are you fostering something new today?

* Read the New York Times Review of Peter Brown’s book here.