Shade permits ferns and moss to flourish, but squelches the colorful blooms many gardeners covet as backyard-brighteners.
In all its dappled degrees, shade confounded Clayton Oslund for years. A canopy formed by mature oaks around his Waseca home prevented sunlight and moisture from nourishing much of anything beneath them, forcing him to search for species that could survive or thrive in this semidarkness.
He’d roll up his sleeves if he had any.
Mike Braun, who often goes sleeveless in summer, and his partner Brian Borth both work shifts hauling garbage and “recyclables” over the streets of Sleepy Eye and Springfield. It’s not a job for pansies. The intense heat off fresh tar can almost melt shoe soles, a whiff of rotting fish can be “most interesting,” says Braun, and the only air conditioning in either of their two facilities is an open window in the break room of their recycling center.
Duane Leach comes across as a plain-spoken, soft-spoken, uncomplicated sort of guy.
He doesn’t rely on rhetoric, doesn’t use $20 words, thinks before he speaks and shrinks the Business Facts of Life to simple terms unblemished by qualifying adjectives.
Nancy Fogelberg seems a bit taken aback when people credit her with turning around what was once a prodigal company, New Ulm’s American Artstone, now a $4.5 million, 50-employee, Midwest leader in architectural pre-cast concrete. She gives all the credit for the turnaround to her employees.
Bernie Koenigs began his haircutting career in a drafty supply room at a U.S. Army base in Ankara, Turkey, where he pruned soldier’s hair for a few extra bucks. He had no training. The year was 1958, at the peak of the Cold War.
For a businessman trapped in a shrinking market, Gary Andersen remains remarkably optimistic.
Andersen is publisher of the Sentinel, a daily newspaper that’s been serving Fairmont and its surrounding trade area in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa since 1874. Fairmont, long regarded as one of Minnesota’s most attractive little cities, lost some of its shine in recent years. In many ways the booming ’90s skipped most rural areas, where population shriveled, retail stores closed and farm families left the land.
Earlier this morning I’d eaten but one lone bagel, flavored with Smart Balance margarine that contains no sugar and only five fat grams per single serving. I’d purposely starved myself. Two hours later, and now, on the road to my next assignment, I am nearly drooling from being tempted with thought after delicious thought of making taste bud love to a glazed doughnut.
I am motoring towards Sugar Mountain.
Every summer, a seasonal suburb blossoms across from Clear Lake, just east of the Waseca city limits on U.S. Hwy. 14.
Residents begin moving in around mid-April with the population peaking at about 1,300 in mid-summer. As in most suburbs, nearly everyone is from somewhere else. Half come from the Twin Cities, 30 percent from Southern Minnesota and the balance from other regions of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and the remaining states. And, like typical suburbanites, most go to the nearest Big City (Waseca) to shop.
Ralph Call, 55, runs all his southern Minnesota business ventures out of his comfy home, snug up against the snow-capped Rockies in scenic Providence, Utah. He stays connected to Minnesota via a computer, fax, telephone and a 300 m.p.h. turbocharged Piper Malibu Mirage that flies back and forth monthly. It’s one heck of a commute.
