Betterment and Praxis

Hey I see this thread is more geared towards personal betterment which is of course important and a beautiful thing on it's own but I don't want it to distract from the intention of this community which is community betterment. Would you all be happy with a monthly personal development thread that I can sticky to the top? I can see this is something a lot of you are looking for and I know loving yourself makes it easier to better serve your community so it's not completely off topic but wasn't exactly the intention. I can sticky this one for now.

I'm trying to keep up with exercise and learn to love my body. So far the exercise is consistent, but the latter is much harder. I'm trying to learn Finnish, but it's been very slow without anyone to talk to. I might end up paying for tutoring

I've been putting together a proposal for a community garden. The location I want is absolutely ideal, just an unused corner of lawn boardering a hospice/care home just behind our village main street. Its near the play ground and across the parking from the native bush reserve.

I'm running into some hurdles with how the location is classed as it is listed as bush even though this corner will not be replanted. This particular corner has been unused for years and not a part of the dog running areas or sports fields. The concerns I was told was about wildlings spredding from the garden but my plan is to implement a banned plants list including everything on the regional plants of concern list as well as plants known for their invasive nature like mint, borage, and foreign wildflowers. The goal is to grow more food staples for the community, educate on backyard gardening with talks on composting, wormfarms, saving seeds, and setting up a garden. I'm really hopeful but not convinced I'll get the location. We'll see 🤞

My other project is setting up a community workshop to share the building with our toy library. Its a huge space and the council wants it to be productive. I think a workshop with vetted members who can have 24h access and open memberships with set access times would be ideal. Still sorting approval and then funding but the goal is to have the garage basics that can be hired out as needed and some in-house workshop staples like a lathe, larger table saw, and mitre saw. I would also like it to have some community robustness staples like a large freezer with frozen meals, a washer, and dryer set up, maybe a spare fridge and a generator or two.

Besides that just updating the toy library catalogue with images to make it easier to navigate and adding a spot for missing peices so I can look for replacements in the 2nd hand shops and dump.