A battle of the seasons

We are ending Lent and approaching Easter, the most important holy day of the Christian calendar. Compared to Christmas, it is less commercialized and secularized. Have a nice and meaningful weekend.

Today is April Fools Day. I did one April Fools post years ago and after that decided I would not do another.

We have a brief relapse to winter—we got a dusting of snow last night but the sun should melt it by noon. We will below freezing again tonight. Not all the snow from real winter has melted. There is still snow (turned to ice) where the City dumped it on Bunkum Avenue. The covering of stone and dirt insulates and protects if from the sun.

There is not a lot happening in my little corner of the world. I did find two virtual meetings to attend since the last post. A week ago the local invasive species group met to continue planning their weed wrangle. It is scheduled for May and will be at the Prairie Border Nature Preserve (south of Teft) at 11713 N 400 E Wheatfield. It will have two components, education and action. There will be several short presentations about site history and management, resources for landowners, and Soil and Water Conservation District programs. Common invasives in our area include garlic mustard, Bradford pear, and Asian honeysuckle. This event will focus on garlic mustard.

Many people do not realize how much work goes into planning even simple events. There are Covid restrictions that have to be implemented. The group discussed who would do the flyer and publicity, whether they needed a port-a-potty, where the pulled garlic mustard would taken for disposal, and who would bring various supplies including release forms, hand sanitizers, masks, pencils, various types of gloves, shovels and hand tools, garbage bags, and poison ivy wipes.

The other meeting is one I found in the Rensselaer Republican, a Coordinated Transportation Plan input meeting. The meeting was conducted by a group called RLS Associates for the Indiana Department of Transportation and is part of the process to writing a planning document that must be updated every four years. You can see the 2017 plan here. (Locally Jasper County Community Services provides a van that can be used from 8:00 to 4:00. People use the van to get to medical appointments and jobs as well as for shopping trips. )

For the plan Jasper County is grouped with Newton, Pulaski, and Stark Counties, and there were representatives from all four counties and also someone from KIRPC attending the meeting. There was a group from Pulaski County sharing the same Zoom screen and most of the time they were very hard to hear. Perhaps the biggest concern was transportation in the evening and on weekends. 

Below is a slide from the meeting showing where people lack automobiles.

The governor's mask mandate ends next week. It will be interesting to watch what happens as a result. The population seems to be very divided on whether to wear masks or not.

A final picture showing the structure in the Fire Department's training facility. It looks more like a house than I remember it looking.