Stormwater and Newborn Kits

Darren and I went to a Wellsville City Council meeting because they were discussing and adopting a new stormwater management plan. If they failed to adopt a plan they would be fined 30,000 dollars a day or the mayor would go to jail. Since Darren had written the stormwater plan for Summit County he thought he could help. Our first action taken was to clean the stormwater drain that is at the end of our street. It had about 10" of compacted dirt on it with dried sunflowers and other various "native plants" that had taken up residency. We were shoveling and sweeping and burning the weeds and another neighbor came down with a tractor and helped clear the debris... and that led to some of the children coming to help keep the weeds burning and others asking what in the world we were doing it wasn't even our property or our responsibility. We had decided before that we would just do it to help out the community and not start griping about the owner of the weedfest. We broke a sweat, but it brought a lot of neighbors out to work on a common project and learn why stormwater runoff is such a problem.

2nd - At my grandfather's Christmas gathering we worked on a humanitarian aid project by putting together newborn kits. It was fun catching up with my aunts and cousins as we filled the bags. Darren was the photojournalist. I posted a picture of my grandpa who is 89 years old with his wife Erica who I consider my grandma. He read poems to us and talked about Christ and tried to remember the words to the song "Freckles" that he used to sing to us when we were little. He promised he would sing the whole thing next year.
DeAnn