Helping Out
It is early October and it’s still warm enough to have the window beside my desk open. I can hear gardening sounds that keep distracting me. Across the alley from my house lives an elderly Italian woman named Domnica. She is trimming a very impressive grape vine on her property. I moved to this neighbourhood at the end of January this year. We had just started to locate all our belongings and enough space amongst the detritus of our lives to begin looking outward towards our new neighbours when the pandemic hit BC. Suddenly all my plans for connecting with our new neighbours, of finding common interests over the fences and moving towards shared meals and garden harvests…