Cleaning Ditches

Cleaning Ditches

By Allan Olson

The old adage, April showers bring May flowers might be true, but the April temperatures that coincide with the showers are sure getting old. I’m starting to have some withdrawal of warm temperatures over the last couple weeks as they cold weather days have outnumbered the warm weather days. April is supposed to be spent in the evening and weekends spending the majority of the day outside enjoying the weather and watching baseball or having some campfires in the backyard.

Friday night, I got home in time to make supper and relax a little bit before the night time called my name. Saturday morning – I was up at the normal weekday time and woke the kids up at the same time to go help our geocaching group pick ditches between Menahga and Sebeka.  Even though it looked like we would get out of the house at the right time a couple last minute items followed by taking some pics of a bird delayed us by 10 minutes. We finally arrived just after the scheduled 9 a.m. start only to find that we weren’t the only ones late so all was well.

Once the full crew was assembled we donned our bright safety vests grabbed some garbage bags and gloves and started getting to the job at hand. Abigail decided to team up with me, while Marcus and Alivia were helping other adults and Nikolai was on the opposite side of the road with some of the other members of our group. I was perfectly okay with having Abigail helping me because she was willing to pick up the trash and if I missed a piece she pointed out the error my ways. The entire ditch cleaning project took less than two hours to complete and we left the ditches much better than we found them.

Once we completed the project a few of us visited a geocaching friend’s farm in Sebeka and the kids were able to enjoy a little time holding some baby goats, petting a donkey, horses and miniature ponies. After the adventure at the petting zoo, we set our sights toward home and the others headed to Brainerd for a group geocaching outing. I had decided to not make this adventure and as I watched the others depart I almost changed my mind, but I had already decided that I need to spend some time at home. I had planned to get some geocaches with the kids, but Nikolai and I are terrible at navigating so instead I opted to stop at the Shingobee Hill area and grab the ones there, but once we got to that area it looked busy so we just headed home instead.

Abigail helping clean ditches.

The rest of the evening was spent around the house, my attempt at a nap failed so I did some computer work instead. We also attempted a fire, but we only wanted a small fire and the wood that Nikolai picked out was a little damp so it provided little warmth and soon it was only my wife and I left at the fire – which wasn’t a bad thing as it provided the most peace and quiet of the day, but soon we too gave up the fire and headed for the warmth of the house.

On rainy day Sunday we didn’t leave the house, I spent too long lying around watching a show in my room before I finally got moving to stretch my back. Later,  I assisted Abigail with making banana muffins and when they were finally ready they all disappeared in a flash. We tried convincing her to make more, but she wasn’t to be persuaded.  I managed to sneak in about an hour nap on the lazy afternoon and then assisted Alivia in making some more banana muffins. At least I assisted her as much as Abigail by reading the instructions and providing minor assistance as needed leaving them to do 99% of the work.

In all it was mostly a relaxing weekend except for some children’s normal attitude when it came time to do some cleaning. Hopefully next weekend we will spend more of it outside.

Please remember to watch out for the buses that are carrying our most precious cargo. Also snap a photo or two to preserve a lifetime of memories. Thanks for reading, and have a great week! Feel free to drop me a line at cltimes1@arvig.net or stop by the office for a visit.