How much, or how little, do you appreciate where you live?

Probably not enough.

Take me, for example. On Saturday afternoon, my Wabasso High School locker mate and classmate Beth Johanneck arrived in Faribault with her friend Melanie. The two regularly take one-day road trips from the Twin Cities and have, for some time, wanted to visit Faribault.

Beth then blogs and posts photos about their travels on her Minnesota Country Mouse website, http://countrymouse.blogharbor.com/.

My husband and I met the pair for lunch at The Depot Bar and Grill before taking them on a tour around the east side of town, an area with an abundance of old, historic stone buildings. I knew Beth would appreciate the history and architecture.

We were barely into our ride-around when Beth asked if Randy would stop the car so she could shoot a picture.

I laughed. “He’s used to it,” I said.

Apparently Melanie is too. She’s the driver when the two travel. Stops for photo shoots, she knows, are just as important as frequent bathroom and coffee breaks.

By the time we reached the 40-acre campus of the Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf, Beth was pretty giddy. I was too. Her enthusiasm for Faribault’s beautiful historic buildings infused me with a new appreciation of the community I’ve called home for 27 years.

I was kind of embarrassed, though, that I couldn’t answer Beth’s numerous historical questions. Fortunately, Randy is pretty good at this local history stuff. He’s lived here longer than me.

At the Academy for the Deaf campus, Beth spotted prom-goers posing for photos on a veranda extending from a sprawling limestone building. She opened the car window to snap images.

“Come on, let’s get out,” I commanded. I think Beth thought I was kind of bossy. She maybe even said I was bossy.

But if we had stayed inside the car, we may have missed the exquisite details (see my photos) that make this one stunning architectural delight.

Sometimes it only takes exiting your vehicle or seeing your community through the eyes of visitors, like Beth and Melanie, to appreciate what’s right in your own backyard.

By Audrey Kletscher Helbling

I never knew, until this weekend, that magnolia trees grow in Minnesota.

I mistakenly thought magnolias thrive only in the warm South, far from the harsh climate of the North.

But there on the Shattuck-St. Mary’s School campus in Faribault, stood a magnolia tree draped in clusters of lovely white blossoms.

The delicate snow-white flowers contrasted sharply with the rough gray stone of a late 1800s circa building on this college preparatory school campus.

Shattuck, for all its sturdy, old stone buildings with detailed architecture, could be an East Coast boarding school, an Ivy League college or a sprawling English estate. The setting evokes that feel of history, of hallowed halls, of introspective study.

And there amid the hard stone, this magnolia tree in bloom, a tangerine bicycle parked nearby. Postcard picture perfect, except for a bright blue bike sprawled on the ground. I moved the blue bike, composed my photo and pressed the shutter button.

By Audrey Kletscher Helbling

All too often in life, we hurry through our days.

We go here, go there. Do this, do that.

In our busyness, we fail to see the simple beauty that lies before us.

Like this violet.

As I was bustling about Friday morning, raking leaves off flower beds, a glimpse of purple caught my eye. I stopped before I stepped upon this tiny wild violet nearly shrouded in the hurry-up and grow grasses of spring.

I laid down my rake, went inside the house, grabbed my camera and stretched flat upon the grass. I peered through the viewfinder, marveling at the veins running through the pale lavender petals that encircled the sunny yellow center.

This violet looked happy, made me smile.

And to think, I nearly stepped upon this flower in my haste to finish yard work, in the busyness of my life.

By Audrey Kletscher Helbling

My husband has a quirky sense of humor.

So it came as no surprise to me that his office was recently bugged. By him.

Several days ago, Randy discovered the dried shell of a bug lying outside the NAPA Auto Parts store in Northfield, where he manages the machine shop.

Now this was not your average, run-of-the-mill, measly dead bug. This insect was pretty darned big at about 2 ½ inches long.

You don’t just toss a remarkable bug like that into the garbage.

So Randy brought the bug inside and asked Gary, a retired science teacher/NAPA delivery driver, about this interesting discovery. Randy was holding a giant water beetle, he said.

Further research revealed this to be one of the largest insects in the U. S., capable of growing up to four inches long. It is also known as a “toe-biter” because of its potentially nasty bite.

Now, what should Randy do with this mouse-sized beetle boring beady black eyes at him?

Place it atop his computer, of course. A computer bug, literally.

There the humongous beetle sat, awaiting his unsuspecting boss who was vacationing while this whole bugging of the office occurred.

I, however, feared that Dan, upon returning and spotting the bug, would squash it. And I didn’t want that to happen because I had not yet seen this much-talked-about creature.

So I sent a warning email to Randy’s boss.

That was a wise decision as Dan was a bit shocked by the size of the bug, which had been strategically placed for greatest fear factor impact.

Now the giant water beetle is safely perched in my home. At first I really didn’t want to touch the thing. But I soon discovered that if I wanted to photograph it, tweezers didn’t work all that well for positioning this fragile bug.

So I gingerly picked up the beetle. And after snapping a few photos, reposing it and taking more pictures, I wasn’t feeling so squeamish any more.

By Audrey Kletscher Helbling

If you’ve ever played Apples to Apples®, you know that winning this comparison game depends on your opponent matching your person, place, thing or event word card to his/her card that features a characteristic of a person, place, thing or event.

Here’s an example from an actual game I played Saturday during Family Game Night at my church.

Tammy turned over a card with the adjective “handsome.” The rest of us rifled through our hands of seven cards searching for a word that would best match “handsome.”

Now, sometimes it helps to consider the judge, in this case Tammy. Does she have a sense of humor? Or is she serious? What does she like? Strategy or just plain dumb luck can win the round for you.

Here are the word cards nine of us tossed face-down across the table for Tammy to flip over and consider: Albert Einstein, killer whales (sometimes choices make no sense), Andy Warhol, Joan of Arc (“She can be handsome,” Neal commented.), local police (local police?), construction workers (that drew some thumbs up from the ladies), Neil Simon (huh?), Batman and carnival workers (“In Germany,” Julia said. “They’re Italian.”).

After much consideration, Tammy chose Batman as the most “handsome.”

Later, Tammy’s 9-year-old son (I think he’s nine), Noah, drew the word “delicious.”

I scanned my card options. Nothing much good there, except, yes, “cow-pies.” I gambled that perhaps Noah didn’t know the meaning of “cow-pies” and would assume anything pie to be “delicious.” (Never mind that the word definitions are printed on the cards.)

Noah methodically filed through the word cards…snow, French wines, toasters…cow-pies…. He paused.

I jumped in. “Cow-pies are delicious,” I said. You would think that something more original would have spewed from my mouth.

And then Tammy leaned over and whispered in her son’s ear. Noah’s face scrunched into an “ew” expression of disgust.

Guess what? He didn’t choose cow-pies. Noah chose toasters. I told you that sometimes this game doesn’t make sense.

Not wanting Noah to get off easily by cheating, I said, “I thought for sure you would pick cow-pies.”

“Maybe if you ate a delicious cow-pie, I would have picked your card,” he shot back at me.

He had me there.