ALERT<––>CITY PLANNERS

ALERT<––>CITY PLANNERS

Transform the city’s core. Enter high rises and locally operated businesses. Parking lots convert to corner-store grocery shops, accompanied by cafés, flower shops, hairstylists, pubs and maybe a pastry outlet, all within walking distance or within public transit. Into the heart of the cement and glass environment equality demands incentives for three and four-bedroom facilities. Families seek city-center access. Watch for sunrise requests––playgrounds close by for children.

Not yet peeking over the horizon will come cries for green space to be carved out of the scarce high-priced land. For a growing downsizing grey-power-people shopping appeals are weak, as are pubs. Provide a park, with grass, and benches near the playground. Include a Tim Hortons kiosk and planters with shrubs and flowers. Color and fragrances attracts seniors like honey to flies. A multigenerational element enriches the city center community.

Take a look in the window of a retired couple that has the means to create a park-like setting around their home. My novel, Baggage burdens. provides an opportunity to view the pleasures elderly experience from the gifts of Mother Nature.

 Jill looks at her grandmother’s bulky photo album, a catalogue of flowers conveying a gardening history of her grandparents and their efforts to create a parklike setting.

Jill flips back to the first page of the album. The pictorial recording begins with her grandparents’ arrival at the property. Josey said, “We came to view this two-story house because it had three bedrooms. We wanted enough room for our children and grandchildren when they’d come to visit.”

 “Seeing a hedge of yellow roses, Golden Wings, bordering the long driveway to the house hooked us!” Josey exclaimed. “We had to explore the rest of the yard. Before we entered the house, George knew he wanted to buy the place.”

An enlarged rose bush picture, Josey’s pride and joy, graces the second page of the album. It commands attention from anyone who approaches the front door. Ignoring the notations at the bottom, Jill flips the page, content that the sight of the yellow roses triggers their name.

The next page illustrates a second row of roses that border the driveway. Artistry, recalls Jill without the slightest desire to peek at the name jotted below the photo. The hybrid tea rose with cupped, luminous, orange-coral flowers and bluish-green leaves even makes a few appearances at the front row where some Golden Wings had died.

Another page. “Ah, the fragrant roses.” Their smell makes sitting on the patio a favorite retreat for Jill.

“George planted these flowers there so the afternoon breeze would carry their scent and impress the guests,” proclaimed Josey one afternoon as she and Jill sat on the patio.

Jill had memorized the names of the fragrant flowers first. The largest clump of patio roses was called Betty Boop. Their ivory-yellow blooms with a strawberry-red edge produced a fruity smell. My favorite. Next to them was Alec’s Red. The orange-red blooms located in partial shade brought forth the Dolly Parton name. What a wonderful spicy fragrance!

 haiku capsule:

swings, slides, kids laughing

grandparents watch, sip coffee

community park

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Tell It to the Judge