{"id":624,"date":"2013-01-06T11:10:42","date_gmt":"2013-01-06T16:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/?p=624"},"modified":"2013-01-14T17:11:44","modified_gmt":"2013-01-14T22:11:44","slug":"a-good-neighbour-sunborrowers-and-watering-cans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/?p=624","title":{"rendered":"A Good Neighbour: Sunborrowers and Watering Cans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 2012, I participated in a local writing contest, held by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodnewstoronto.ca\/\" target=\"_blank\">Good News Toronto<\/a>, called the True Story Contest. The challenge was to write about A Good Neighbour in 450 words or less.<\/p>\n<p>I wrote about an unknown neighbour of mine who watered (and saved) my toddler&rsquo;s bean plant this summer and about my parents&rsquo; neighbour, Colette, who does the same for my father&rsquo;s tomato plants. \u00a0My piece won second place in the contest and was\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodnewstoronto.ca\/2013\/01\/good-news-toronto-writing-contest-second-place-winner\/\" target=\"_blank\">published online<\/a>\u00a0this month.<\/p>\n<p>An excerpt from <em>Sunborrowers and Watering Cans<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Armed with a watering can, Colette makes her way across her neighbours\u2019 lawn and down a small hill to the vegetable patch. She carefully removes the mesh wire fence, which ineffectively keeps rabbits out, and steps in to water the thirsty plants and their cherry-red fruit. Once that job is done, she fills the watering can with the bite-sized tomatoes, ensuring none goes to waste. There are always more when my parents return, as long as Colette waters them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Later, Colette drags a lawn chair onto my parents\u2019 property for a well-deserved rest. Papa jokes that it\u2019s only fair: in the afternoon, Colette\u2019s place is in shadow, \u201cso we let her borrow our sun!\u201d A little water for a little sun; it\u2019s a pleasant, reciprocal relationship.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Colette blushed when I read her the story, right before it was published online. I could tell she was surprised, yet pleased, about her role in this story. Now, my task is to figure out which of my 600+ neighbours helped along our &lsquo;garden&rsquo; this summer and offer my thanks in person.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2012, I participated in a local writing contest, held by\u00a0Good News Toronto, called the True Story Contest. The challenge was to write about A Good Neighbour in 450 words or less. I wrote about an unknown neighbour of mine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[159,303,164,160,97,302,162,307,304,68,306,99,305,12],"language":[7],"class_list":["post-624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-m","tag-bean","tag-contest","tag-good-news","tag-matte","tag-neighbour","tag-newspaper","tag-plant","tag-sunborrowers","tag-toddler","tag-tomato","tag-toronto","tag-watering-cans","tag-writing","language-en_ca"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=624"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":630,"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions\/630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=624"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ammatte.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Flanguage&post=624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}