A lot has been written of late about the housing situation in Vancouver. There is no question that an onslaught of demolition and development is taking place and no question that the cost of housing has skyrocketed in this fair city.
But, that is not the story that I want to tell today. This story has to do with how people keep the filaments of human relationships alive on the ground in the midst of it all. Like many good stories it is hard to say where it begins, but perhaps a starting point is to describe what we did at the front of our house: we ripped out the lawn and set up four raised beds. Interested in growing more of our own food and tired of marching around behind a lawn mower we had no idea what an impact this change would have on our neighborhood.
Whenever we are out there working people stop by, some to compare notes, others to tell stories of bygone eras when families grew their own food, some to introduce their children to the novelty of food growing outside the supermarket, others to strategize about the relentless insurgence of development. Our front garden began to have a civilizing influence. Relationships developed over time and the neighborhood became more hospitable.
That brings me to the rhubarb. For reasons still unknown, we have a gift for growing rhubarb, leafy, lush, proliferating rhubarb. Many people stop by just to marvel at our rhubarb.
About the same time as the garden experiment began a family moved next door who really knows how to do neighborhood. Rabbi Mark from Brooklyn and Shelly from rural England have 6 lovely children. Their backyard is a basketball court and the family baseball team does spring training at a nearby park. Friday night and Jewish holidays are filled with music, joyous singing and food. We talk over the fence, do the odd favor for one another and watch over each other's houses during vacations. It's no big deal. It just happened naturally over time. We give them excess food from our garden, including fulsome red stalks of rhubarb and plants for the small children's garden they have begun to grow a few meters from ours.
This spring the rhubarb took off early and by April we had our first crop. I delivered a bag next door to Shelley and Mark. Next day there was a knock on the door. Second son tasked with errands now his older brother is away at school was delivering two silver foil pots of the most tasty rhubarb crumble imaginable and on my birthday too.
Well, it seems something small, but I am celebrating it here because that is what neighborhoods and maybe all human social clusters are best made of -- small acts of kinds and consideration that begin to weave an invisible net that makes the world a better place.