A Couple of Lovely Things In Detroit

We had a wonderful time catching up with family in Detroit. As I mentioned we did a lot of wonderful eating. There were a couple of things that I thought that were a bit out of the ordinary and were realy wonderful. No pictures just now but I hope to post one or two with this soon.

Firstly it was really amazing to go back to Florence's garden where we got married. When we arrived in the US we were picked up by Laura who was also getting David from the airport. We dropped David off at Florence's house and got to see how wonderful things were. Walking out the back to where we got married was really special for me. As I've noted before, coming home we were particularly partial to things like clean air, nice comfortable temperatures and well cared for gardens and that combined with the memories of a great number of our friends and family from all over the world being there was a really special way to come back to one of our homes.

Another really special thing happened when we headed downtown Detroit one day to go to the local farmers market. On the way down we stopped off to check up on the place where some members of the family (most credit due to David I believe) had organized for the Greening of Detroit -an urban environmental oganization- to plant some trees in honor of Rachel's grandfather. Quite a few of the family including Rachel and I went along to help out at the planting stage.

The site that was selected was a triangle of grasss between some roads in front of the enormous school where Rachel's grandfather, and many others in the family, went to school. The school buildings where really beautiful and very majestic. The school actually was a site for primary school all the way through to the end of high school so a lot of people in Detroit spent a big chunk of their lives there. Unfortunately the Detroit school system has been in trouble and the downtown area has soured over the years so the neighbourhood and the school are now a bit rough.

Just the fact that the trees were planted was nice and when a group of us went by we saw that the area had been recently mowed and was looking tidy. We went over to pick up small bits of trash lying around and to remember. As we were over there a lady came over towards us, we were organizing to take a picture of our little group there and she helped us out. Afterwards she started to convey her very heartfelt thanks for the improvement that had been made in the area. She lives right there and said that since the trees had been planted it had been regularly mowed and maintained. She said that she really loved this little piece of land now and gazed out every morning at it in a medatative way while she collected herself for the day. She and her family were longtime residents and really cared about the neighbourhood and were so grateful that others had put some effort into the place as well. She was tearful and hugging everyone and it was really wonderful to be there! Good work to the Greening of Detroit, David and the other members of the family who made this happen. I bet that David's father Jack couldn't have wished for any more touching moment than that one.