Sunflower Thief
The front page of the daily paper in our nearest town carried this picture last Thursday morning. The picture is in color and measures 7½” x 9″. 
As you can imagine, it WAS the front page story. Page 3 continued with the headline: “Tatamagouche sunflower thief has business owners up in arms” over a smaller b&w photo of one such owner displaying the holes in her flower arrangement.
Six years ago, I would have had a good chuckle over this being the most important “crime” story of the day. Now I’m proud that it is. Not proud of the thievery, but this kind of news wouldn’t have made even the back pages of the newspaper in the city.
But this is not the charming news story that you think it is. This theft made front page news since it’s important – because we’re not talking about sunflowers here, we’re talking about trust.
Sunflowers can be replaced – and will be, because the sunflower has been adopted as the village’s official flower. According to the accompanying article on page 3, “the Tata Communities in Bloom committee is hosting a Business Sunflower Challenge, encouraging businesses to decorate storefronts with planters, hanging baskets, benches, and other creative items… In addition, homeowners are also encouraged to show their community spirit by entering a residential gardening contest and must include at least one sunflower in flowerbeds or planters.”
Trust, however, is not so easily restored. This is the trust that allows us here to put out benches & planters and leave them overnight and on the weekends. That allows work crews to place the community hanging flower baskets at half the height of any other municipality I’ve seen. The trust that allows us to leave our cars unlocked when we to run into the post office for stamps.
Having that trust is part of a way of life – it IS a way of life. Don’t mistake this – this is one of the major reasons you should be moving to the country. Don’t make the horrible error of telling folks that “that’s nothing – you should have seen the city…” They don’t care about the city and you’re not getting it.
If you want to belong here, understand what’s lost in these situations. Make yourself trustworthy. Show that you trust others. It can be a hard transition. What do you think would be the impediments to doing this?
[tags]community vales, sunflower theft, truro daily news[tags]
When I first moved here I completely had the wrong attitude (not that I would steal sunflowers!) but I didn’t understand the rhythms and the connectedness of everyone.
I used to live in Holland, Michigan – they have an enormous tulip festival there. They’ve solved the problem of tulip thievery with a fine – $500.00 if you’re spotted picking the prettiness.