Meet Lovie Thomas. Ms. Thomas has lived at 29th and Melvina since 1971.

“I love living there. It’s been beautiful. But in the later years now it has been something different. We work hard trying to keep it up and make it look well.”

Ms. Thomas enjoys her yard of beautiful flowers, which she waters from her rain barrel, which collects rainwater that falls onto her roof and flows down the downspout during the summer.

While she and her husband have thankfully not experienced flooding, she knows a nearby neighbor who had water in their basement. Green infrastructure like rain barrels and rain gardens—and the bioswales at Melvina Park—is designed to hold onto water and reduce the risk of flooding.

To know Ms. Thomas is to know she loves to sing. Age 80 in 2022, she has been singing since she was age 3. “I have traveled overseas to France and to Italy and to Africa [singing]…. I sing wherever. Funerals. Weddings. Baby showers. I just came back from my cousin in Detroit and I thought I was just going to sing one song and as soon as I get through with that one, she just kept playing the songs. And she knew that I knew those songs, and so she started playing them, and I started singing. So, there it is.”