Gratitude Post

As our little Facebook group Pollinate / Pollinisez Aylmer prepares to begin planting Butterflyway gardens across Aylmer next week (watch this space), I am so moved and humbled by how we have begun coming together, and what this little group of perfect strangers 6 weeks ago have begun putting in motion.

I want to thank each of the people in this group for coming together to help make these Butterflyway gardens happen, and also just to build this community, from nothing.

I never expected to meet such an amazing, passionate and generous group of people when I started this, and I feel so grateful to have met and begun knowing glimpses of each of you.

Not everyone is comfortable speaking up in a public forum, or able to attend our garden walks, meetings, coffee chats or potting parties which seem to have organically sprouted, but there are so many acts of help, and kindness, and gestures happening in the background of this group, and I just want to take a minute to recognize these people, by actions if not by name, and let each of you know how much you matter.

We have group members gathering, coordinating and picking up planting pots from various members of the community for us to reuse when potting up seedlings; 

group members going to fix the aging planting boxes at one of our school gardens;

group members donating shade cloth to protect the seedlings from drying out;

group members designing our new logo;

and group members willingly stepping in and helping to take ownership, leadership and organization of the group, meetings, plantings, opportunities, booth manning, and generally anything that needs doing when we realize something needs doing.

We are sooo grateful to those of you coming by to help pot up the baby seedlings at the ‘potting parties’ I’ve been hosting when my body lets me;

grateful to those of you opening your homes and hosting tours and inspiration walks through your gardens;

grateful to those of you taking the time to share knowledge, plants, incredible home made tea recipes, your struggles and personal stories together, whether in small groups, large gatherings, or impromptu chats with strangers connecting through raising chickens, weird humour, a love of plants, nature and the idea of restoring habitat and building community.

Grateful to those of you who have joined us because you want to learn how to restore habitat in your own yard, attract pollinators and plant native plants, and have no idea where to start, yet you come to meetings and garden tours and absorb every word and wisdom,while shivering in the cold and being targeted by mosquitoes, then use that knowledge to begin converting your own slice of urban habitat.

On Monday and Tuesday we will plant our first Butterflyway garden. I want to dedicate this first one to this group and I hope you read this and understand how much you each helped make this first one happen, and each of the ones that will follow shortly after.

This is the little sign that we will place in each of the Butterflyway Gardens created by this group. You are the one mentioned, and you are the one helping, each of you, in your own way.

Thank you, each of you, for helping to take an idea of action through kindness and turning it into our own growing version of a small movement making little waves throughout the heart of Aylmer.

I say we because Pollinate Aylmer /  Polliniser Aylmer (QC) is no longer my thing, nor do I want it to be. I love watching this group become a community, I love being able to learn and share knowledge with each of the members in this group whom I’ve met, and I love growing plants from seed and sharing them out into the world.

I hope we can continue to grow, at our own pace, in our unique and often quirky ‘planty people’ way, and inspire each other and our community while we Pollinate Aylmer and leave it a little better then before, together.

Thank you 🥰,

Ioana