I give my friends lots of plants from my gardens. They come by with buckets and shovels and dig up clumps of bee balm, lemon balm, lilies-of-the-valley, evening primrose, sweet woodruff, tansy, wild sunflowers, blackeyed Susans, Pacific bleeding-hearts, magenta, purple and yellow violets, false Solomon’s seal, phlox, euphorbia…all the flowers that spread easily. (I consider it not a gift to them but to me… it saves me a lot of weeding and thinning.) It’s a reproducible resource too.
I have a buddy whose wife has a chronic illness that makes it hard for him to watch TV at his house. He is free to wander in and out of mine at odd hours and can watch one of my TV’s most of the time, as long as he gives me a heads’-up first. (Again, it’s a nice swap. In exchange, once a month he takes my recycleables to the dump.)
I write all my sister’s press releases and artistic statements for her painting exhibitions. I proof read and do line-by-line ediing many of my daughter’s writings and similar editing for several others.
I am a pretty good listener to a handful of people who need a pretty good listener.
I just lent (probably permanently) a friend my luggage, since Jimmy the Greek gives really long odds of me ever getting on a plane again.
If I can do someone a favor, I say “Yes” and then do it. If I can’t, I say “No.”