Neighborhood Clean Up

On Saturday morning I got up real early and went down to the Sacred Heart neighborhood. This is an area just south of downtown. I would say it is in the worst conditions out of all of the sides of downtown. Run down houses, yards filled with crap, old broken down cards. Chris made me go look at houses for rent in this area even though I told him it was pointless b/c I would never ever ever live there. Anywho, I signed up for this clean up because my grandma grew up in the Sacred Heart area and went to church at Sacred Heart Catholic Church. In fact, that is where we spent many Saturday nights with her in her last years and its where we had her funeral. I thought it would be neat to give back to this area that was a home to my grandma and my family for so many years. The basic idea behind this group that I was volunteering for was not only to clean up the area, but instead of leaving it a big empty lot, they would turn it into a garden that produced fruits and vegetables for the people in the community. We started two of the four gardens that they will make this spring. I weeded, I raked, and then the worst came. I helped shovel soil into wheel barrows that were taken across the street to the second garden. At first when the pile was high, I thought this is easy! But as the pile got lower and I got more tired, oh wow. Yesterday I was definitely feeling it. So we just started the gardens. They will be going back every Saturday to do a little bit more work. One of the other neat things was that I met the guy who bought my family's funeral home. So he was happy to meet someone from the Lauck family and told me to come by to see all the changes (um, no thank you) and that business was up 30% from last year (awesome!). He gave me his business card which of course I will be using to keep my dad in check. :-)