A Month in the Life of Pacific Gardens

While Pacific Gardens still was under construction, we shareholder / developers used to discuss our vision of what it would be like to live in cohousing.

Kathryn recounted her experience of living in a housing cooperative* in London, Ontario. She said it had been a really cool place. It was a hub of interesting and fun activities, not just for the people who lived there, but for the larger community as well. She envisaged that Pacific Gardens would play a similar role in Nanaimo.

When I saw the March issue of The Bloomin’ News, the newsletter that Sharon publishes, it brought home to me the fact that Kathryn’s dream had come true. Just check out a month in the life of Pacific Gardens; in this case it was February 2013:

3 birthday parties, the youngest 1, the oldest 83

1 NVC [Non-Violent Communication] workshop

seeds have sprouted in cold frames

Family Sing

2 residents got pneumonia

at least one "Ladies Night" get together

Nanaimo Green Party AGM

a flood [involving the central hot water heater]

someone learned a new magic trick

someone went nude bungee jumping [offsite, at the Nanaimo River!]

one Qi Gong lesson

4 men's group sessions

work progressed in "front yard" by pond

a fun group game of Encore [described in Kathryn's blog post entitled With A Song in My Heart]

we successfully defended the community against Smart Meters for the 4th time [Proud Members of Team Tinfoil and Team Tinfoil Stands Firm]

3 pairs of ducks nested

a small walking club began

we purchased 20 new chairs for the dining hall

8 yoga classes

the floor seams were repaired

the snowdrops and crocus bloomed

1500 plus people viewed one of our Facebook posts!

5 community meetings

4 meditation sessions

a community circle

a book club meeting

4 community potlucks [you are welcome to join us for our potlucks at 6:00 pm on Thursdays]

1 Council of Canadians meeting

the garden was visited by several deer

2 residents were hospitalized

the frogs began singing

potholes [in the parking lot] were refilled

neighbours enjoyed each other

the community got stronger

What modest Sharon did not include in her list was that a useful newsletter was published to help residents keep on top of what was going on. Thank you, Sharon!

* For the sake of clarity, there are some technical differences between a cohousing complex and a housing cooperative, but in practical terms there are many similarities.

Faith and Move-Ins

My apologies for not posting to the blog more often this week.  I know with blogs that in order to make them effective you're supposed to write in them every other day - sort of like flossing!

My excuse is house guests and a move-in.  I had another set of friends from Scotland come for a visit (and they, too, were surprised by the amount of traffic and car use in a small city like Nanaimo), and some new tenants move in to Pacific Gardens.

This was no ordinary move-in.  What made it really special was the faith and determination of the young family who have come to live here, because they did it sight unseen.

They had been wanting to move to a warmer climate than the one in the rural community outside Edmonton where they were living, and if possible, to a life in cohousing.

So they started with the web, first going to the Intentional Communities Directory where we've been listed for several years, and found Pacific Gardens.
When they went to our website, they saw that we had some units for rent, including a three-bedroom-and-den.

They e-mailed, we answered, they read our newsletter The Bloomin' News, they telephoned. And then they made a decision to move themselves and their three children to our community, trusting that they would find a better life here, and this without ever meeting any of us or seeing where they would be living.

I find their faith in us and the potential of life in cohousing amazing and heartening and wonderful, and I'm excited about what they will bring to Pacific Gardens.

Faith may or may not move mountains, but it can rev up moving vans to travel over them!

Kathryn