MIGHTY NEIGHBOURLY

We are continually amazed at the friendliness and generosity of the people living around us here in Grand Forks.  In our other homes in Salmon Arm and Kamloops, we knew our neighbours well enough to say “hello” and have short conversations but there was very little sharing of anything else.  Things are different here.

Our neighbour to the north had 2 dead trees along the fence line and Stuart offered to cut them down for her.  We did this during the summer and then this fall when her plums were ripe, she invited us over to pick as many as we wanted.  That was great as we don’t have any fruit trees yet.

I talk to the neighbour lady to the east quite often and she has been giving us cucumbers and grapes from her garden.  Then a few days ago, she called to say that another neighbour was picking all her tomatoes in advance of a frost and had extra to give away if I wanted any.  So we arranged to meet at the corner of our properties and she passed me a bag of green tomatoes over the fence.  How cool is that? 

Stuart had a root canal a few weeks ago and the dentist was considerate enough to phone him in the evening to see how he was doing.  Boy, neither my dentist nor orthodontist ever phoned me after all the work I had done.  And this week, Stuart needs another appointment and the dentist is going to stay late today to get the work done.  That wouldn’t normally happen in a larger centre.  Grand Forks isn’t that small—about 5,000 people in the city limits with an overall area population of about 12,000.

So, it’s count down time to heading south—only 10 days from today.  We are planning to take the same route as last year down I 84 and highway 93 but of course, we’ll have a different starting point.  That changes our stopover places as well so we’ll have some new adventures and stories to tell.  It’s going to feel a bit sad to leave our home but once we get on the road, I am sure that it will feel great.