Lifestyle

It is hard for us to understand the wisdom God used to create everything. We’ve grown up with stories that have given us images from someone else. Starting in Sunday school, we had curriculum where the authors tried their best to give a three-year-old an image of what God’s creation would look like in the beginning. Though we learn, we can lose the ability for our own imaginations to build a picture using our own mind’s eye. Our mind kind of takes the easy way out and give us a quick image of something we’ve seen before, we don’t even realize that we are doing this, it just happens.

We had a frost advisory on Saturday night into early Sunday morning for much of Greater Minnesota. Temperatures generally fell into the mid-30s across central and west-central Minnesota.

Since my re-diagnosis of cancer, I have been downsizing and “getting things in order.” In doing so, (and since my retirement) I have been looking through old work papers, including notes I had taken at various presentations I had attended. Recently, I ran across some notes that I feel are worthy to highlight in this column.

On Saturday afternoon, a crowd gathered at Montevideo’s Smith Park for the annual Mental Health and Suicide Awareness Walk. The event was hosted by the organizations Western Mental Health, New Directions, Lac qui Parle Local Advisory Council and the Montevideo Community Center and featured speakers Ray Stenglein and Jared Wosmek.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Arbor Day Foundation, the largest member nonprofit organization on a mission to plant and distribute trees around the world. The celebrating of Arbor Day began in January of 1872, when a Nebraska Newspaper editor named J. Sterling Morton proposed a tree planting holiday at a meeting of the State Board of Agriculture. The first celebration was held on April 10, 1872, offering prizes to those who planted the largest number of trees. Estimates for trees planted that day totaled more than one million trees. The City of Granite Falls planted trees in Rice Park in honor of the day. Pictured are Water Plant Superintendent Chris Anderson and Granite Falls Mayor Dave Smiglewski. Photo by Jessica Stolen-Jacobson

Friday evening, the 29th annual Chippewa and Yellow Medicine Counties American Cancer Society Relay for Life event was held at Smith Park in Montevideo. The event began with a performance by the community band, while guests were able to visit vendor booths, enjoy a meal and sign up for the split-the-pot. Luminaries were set about the path through the park, and one section was designated as a “survivors garden”, featuring photographs and paper flowers with the survivors names.

As a gardener, I’m an amateur at best, so whenever I sow a seed, I’m sure I’m doing it wrong – I always think, there’s no way this tiny thing will become an actual plant. And yet for two seasons now, I’ve been astonished.

In the Hundred Acre Wood, during the season of spring, you will find Piglet spring cleaning, beating his rugs outside his tree house. Some say spring cleaning comes from Persian New Year (first day of Spring) or the Jewish anticipation of Passover. Others say it’s just the first time you can leave the windows open. Either way, it’s the time to streamline. But how?

Hey, Granite Falls? Together, we did it. Our community came together and – over four months – raised the funds we needed in order to bring a new resident artist to town from August to October of 2022!