Our neighborhood used to have crime and drugs.  Our community police officer said just a few years ago bullets were flying in this neighborhood.  Not anymore.

When I came here to be with JeanPaul, there was drug activity on our street.  This was now my home and there wasn’t room for me and drugs on this street.  So I made a royal pain of myself.  I made it very uncomfortable for people to buy drugs.  When a car would pull up, I would go out to the front of the house and begin taking pictures – like I was a real estate person, with a clip board and a pen in hand.    The buyers got nervous and left pretty quickly.  Business dried up.  JeanPaul said I was going to get myself shot.  I didn’t think so.  They could buy drugs anywhere – they didn’t care if they bought them on my street or some other street but I had a vested interest in making sure they didn’t buy on my street.  It worked.

What I didn’t know was that a whole bunch of other people in my newly adopted neighborhood were doing exactly the same thing.  Their life savings were tied up in their houses and they weren’t going down without a fight.  The dealers hadn’t counted on that.  They decided to leave rather than deal with us.

Instead of guns, we have flower pots – lots of them.  In celebration of our efforts the city has given us a bunch of flower pots.  Families and businesses adopt them – we fill them and we maintain them.  This is one of the pots JeanPaul and I adopted.  It resides at the bottom of our street.  In the early evening, as you drive along the main street, you can see people walking with buckets of water towards their adopted pot.

We are proud of the pots.  They are sentinels, kind of like the Statue of Liberty – bring me your tired…

It is raining this morning so I won’t be watering the pots today.  I’ll probably stop by just to say hello and tell my daisies how lovely they look in the summer rain.