Monday, September 26th.

Hello again.  I'm actually writing my first blog today.  Wahoo!  I didn't think I'd ever get to it.   I was down in the sun room tending to my newly potted pepper and tomato plants, having brought the babies in from outside since we're heading into fall, when my eye caught the How to Build Community poster hanging by the sun room door.  The first three suggestions are:  Turn off your TV.  Leave your house.  Know your neighbors.

Sounds like good advice to me, and one Larry and I take to heart.  We turned off the TV years ago, in 2009 to be exact, when we moved back to this area and parked our Bounder motor home at a local RV park.  Being a very rural and bargain priced park, it didn't offer a lot of perks so we simply stopped watching TV.  It was no big deal as we were down to about an hour a week, if we didn't forget...and we've been happier for it ever since.  Haven't missed it at all.

Leaving the house in really rural USA is easy to do, in fact necessary if you want to thrive in the country.  Many folks here still stick to rural ways of ranching, farming, raising chickens or gardening in a big way.  Putting up summer and fall harvests to get through the winter is commonplace.  Canning, freezing drying, cider pressing, root cellaring, foraging, fishing or hunting occupy many a resident's time during the cooler days of autumn.  Yep, leave the house, get out in the fresh air and enjoy the sights, sound and smells of nature whenever you can.  It'll improve your mood and your health.

Which brings me to the third suggestion:  Know your neighbors.   This is really important for country living.  Rural neighbors rely on each other for all kinds of reasons and situations, from lending a hand when help is needed to volunteering in the community to simply getting together for socializing or celebrating an important event.  This results in neighborly bonding, the necessary glue that holds a community together.

So my advice to you is:  Build your community and start doing so by turning off your TV, leaving your house and getting to know your neighbors.  It's essential for country living, but equally important for city living as well.  Build community wherever you are.  Your neighbors not only can enrich your life, they might even save it someday.  Ruminate on that, and let your passion for creative community building come alive.