The Joys of Summer

I grew up in the country in a small Minnesota town. When my older sisters moved away, I inherited the responsibility of mowing the lawn. As you might imagine, mowing our 10+ acre lawn was an all-day event. Even with a riding lawn mower, I could pretty much count on 6 hours of my day dedicated to the chore. My mother had a fondness for planting trees, which meant making a series of figure 8s combined with a lot of forward and reverse motions around each tree to get as close to the trunk as possible. If it was a particularly wet year, mowing would take even longer as I would stop for every frog I’d find hopping through the yard. Although it was a long and tedious chore, I enjoyed the gratification that came from seeing the near-straight lines of a freshly mowed lawn, the chance to pop a cassette tape into my Walkman and memorize all the words to my favorite songs, or sometimes just the opportunity to be alone with my thoughts and enjoy the solitude. As adults with jobs and seemingly endless lists of responsibilities, we seldom have the opportunity for peace, quiet, or solitude.

My hope when you pick up this magazine is that you can tune out the noise and commotion around you and find just a few minutes to enjoy learning more about the beautiful community in which we live. Whether you skim the articles, browse the advertisements, or even just look at the pictures, I hope they bring a bit of calm to your otherwise hectic day. This issue of GRAND celebrates a few of the joys of summer: outdoor concerts, water activities, refreshing beverages, and where to go to get ready for the golf course. Additionally, we get a closer look at one of our community’s greatest assets: the new and improved LISTEN Center.

As always, please reach out with any story ideas or potential contributions. We love hearing from our readers! And be sure to check out our latest “The Art of…” podcasts on GRAND Lifestyle magazine’s website and Facebook page.

TAMI VIGNESS EDITOR GRAND Lifestyle magazine tvigness@bbiinternational.com

GrandLifestlyeMagazine.com

VOLUME 6 ISSUE 2

GRAND

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