All I Am Saying, Is Give Peas a Chance

Tuesday we spent visiting friend Barb's family and friends in St. Peter, MN. As you drive down Hwy 169 past Le Sueur, MN you spot a huge statue of the Jolly Green Giant up on the hill overlooking the valley. This is the home of Green Giant food. They can corn and the Green Giant peas in the valley. Tee-hee. Old joke. I think the company is now owned by a foreign group but still busy freezing and canning vegetables grown in the area. That was one of the jobs my dad did years ago. Now it is probably manned mostly by "guest workers". They need a surge of workers to pick and pack the crops as they harvest.

We had a great day at a lake cabin on lake Washington outside of St. Peter. Barb's lifetime friends and her brother and wife who have a cabin next door to the friends' hosted. They have comfortable cabins that still look like a cabin should. This lake is in transition and looks like a lot of the lakes up north where p eople buy small cabins, tear them down, and build 6000 sq.ft. summer lake homes with pools and extensive landscaping. Our hosts took our group of eleven on a pontoon tour of the lakeshore. Fun day with nice people.

Before heading home, Barb narrated a tour of St. Peter. This town was devastated by an F 4 tornado six years ago but seems to have sprung back. The trees are smaller but everything has been rebuilt and replanted. One of the tales of the tornado involves a friend of Barb. He picked up his mom from her trailer court to bring her to the safety of his basement when the tornado warnings were sounded. The house they sought sanctuary in was demolished by a trailer blown into it. Mom's trailer was untouched. You just never know about that weather.