Amateur interest, local challenges, new purpose

Dr. Helen Beattie, an amateur gardener from Corstorphine, New Zealand, has turned her backyard into a vegetable growing plot to help feed her local community. She started the project after her children left home and now neighbors come to collect vegetables from her. Dr. Beattie plans to expand the project and set up a stall in front of her house. Her story shows how anyone can find a new purpose by using their hobbies and skills to help others. Dr. Beattie was inspired by her childhood memories and the challenges of rising living costs and declining food security. Her story encourages parents whose children have left home to consider how they can develop new skills, help their community, and draw inspiration from their past. Hello, Jeremy Dieter, and welcome to the Insight Post for the 4th October 2023. Amateur interest plus local challenge equals new purpose. From Corstorphine, near Dunedin in New Zealand, Dr Helen Beattie, an up-and-coming empty nester, now grows vegetables for her local community as well as her household. She has always grown vegetables, although she would not call herself an expert gardener. With more time on her hands as her children leave home, she has built planters and turned her backyard into a vegetable growing plot to help feed her local community, according to Lane Presley at the Ortega Daily Times. Her project has met with success as neighbours come to collect vegetables, and she intends to develop her project and set up a stall in front of her house. Amateur interest becomes community resource. Dr Beattie's story can inspire anyone whose children have left home. She has taken her amateur interest in gardening and used it as the basis of a project to utilise the time she now has available. Then she found a new purpose by focusing on helping her local community. Looking outwards is important because genuine meaning and purpose derive from being of service to others. Dr Beattie also found the motivation from childhood memories and current challenges. Undoubtedly, finding inspiration can be difficult. It is often a stumbling block for parents who have spent 20 plus years raising their children and now need help to raise enthusiasm to do something new. Inspiration from local challenges and childhood experiences. Dr Beattie, however, took an existing amateur interest, even though she admits to not being an expert, and developed it so she could help her local community in a time of rising living costs and declining food security. She was undoubtedly influenced and motivated by her memories of her childhood home in New Zealand's High Country, where everybody had flourishing vegetable gardens in their backyards and self-sufficiency was paramount. The story should inspire any parent whose children have left home to consider three questions. What skills or hobbies can I develop to give me a new purpose? What external challenges need my help, skills and talents? And what childhood memories and beliefs can help to inspire me into a new way of life? Dr Beattie's is an inspirational story of how a mum, with time on her hands as her children flew the nest, turned an amateur interest into a community project.