Eyes that see the good in things: June 18, 2018

It seems that spring is finally giving way to summer. I enjoyed the spring flowers like I always do. The flowering crabapple trees are always amazing to me. The short-lived lilacs have always been my favorites.

The early blossoming flowers and fruit trees have faded now though, and I am happy to say that I still have lilacs on a couple of my new lilac bushes. They started flowering early and they are still going strong. I hope that’s a sign of things to come. I would love to have lilacs that lasted that long every year.

I’m still waiting to see my first Monarch butterfly of the season though. The bush that usually draws them to the house has been flowering for a week, but I haven’t seen a butterfly yet.

There’s a lot of work to be done in my yard this year. Oh, why am I pretending that’s a new occurrence? There’s always a lot of work to be done in my yard. We got most of the garden planted. It’s up and doing well, but the weeds are starting to take over. The same thing is true about my flower beds. I’m thinking some lower maintenance garden plans may be in order. There are just too many other fun things to do that don’t involve being tied to the weeds. If anyone has any low maintenance ideas, let me know.

 I wanted to take a little vacation this weekend. Just a four-day weekend away. It’s not in the cards though…the garden had other plans for us. Somehow, knowing that if we take our little “get-away” the weeds in the garden would also plan their own little “get away” and that’s a deterrent. So, we’re staying home to weed garden and flower beds, mow lawn and clean house. Not the weekend I had hoped for.

Today, as I was paging through pictures of the Nelson County Arts Council’s Pekin Days Art Show and while I was looking at all the pictures of the white tents I began thinking of a day I spent with my sister a while back. We were both in a phase where we loved craft shows and our cousin kept telling us about the huge craft fair in Little Falls, Minn. Since my sister only lives about an hour away from Little Falls, we finally planned to make a day of it. One group of our family was headed to a Twins game, so we all gathered at her house. The baseball fans took off early that morning and after they headed down the driveway, so did we.

Our cousin, Joy, used to plan this as an annual event. She and her husband would pack up the camper and meet his brother and sister-in-law in Little Falls. The sisters-in-law would spend two entire days at this fair. Their husbands were just as pleased they didn’t have to go with them. If you enjoy that type of thing and haven’t been there, you really should go.

The Little Falls Arts & Crafts Fair is an award-winning event with nearly 600 artists that draws about 100,000 people over the two-day event. Little Falls is not a large town, about 8,000 people but it’s a pretty town on the banks of the Mississippi River. I was not prepared for the sheer number of people and exhibitors. Main Street was completely lined with the vendor tents as were many of the side streets. We received an exhibitor map that showed the types of vendors that were set up and where they were located. In addition to the tent-lined streets, there were parking lots, fairground and parks that had been turned into little tent cities.

There was no way that we would be able to make it to all of them in one day, so we looked at the map and devised a plan of attack. We planned to stop off at a little tourist-y strip mall on our way home. Since it was September, we were both in Christmas shopping mode. This fair is always held the weekend after Labor Day, so the weather is usually milder. This day was an exception as it was extremely warm, and it seemed like there was no breeze at all. The heat was stifling and even worse inside the crafter’s booths. We were troopers, though, and made our way through many of those booths, carrying our treasures with us as we purchased.

We even managed to run into Joy and her sister-in-law. Joy was excited about the little ruffled dress she had gotten for her new granddaughter. That’s how I know it was more than just a few years ago; that granddaughter graduated from high school this year. They were laughing because they had already been back to the camper with a load of purchases and were excited to get out and do more shopping.

Her smile was contagious and she was one of the most fun people I’ve ever known. She loved games of all kinds, board games and card. Although I can’t say I share her love of board games, I played a lot of them with her but her warmth and hospitality were genuine. Her house was a gathering place frequently, whether it was for family reunions, cousin’s parties, craft sessions, sewing lessons or just for coffee.

Her name, Joy, seemed to fit her perfectly; she had struggled with serious medical issues for over twenty years and knew that life was not to be taken for granted. Yet, I had never met anyone who was so able to take life’s blows and come through it with grace and gratitude.

We would love to share local stories about the good things your eyes are seeing.

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