WE'RE ON A DATE - DEC.

6, 2013

GARDENS LOVE ME I'LL TEACH THEM TO LOVE YOU TOO!

Inaugural Issue, Be Awesome:

Constantly Serve Always Improve Enjoy Your Life
DEAL WITH FEAR TIME TO READ: 1 MIN 10 SEC TREES, AN UPDATE TIME TO READ: 57 SEC BUILD COMMUNITY TIME TO READ: 50 SEC

GARDENS LOVE ME
I'LL TEACH THEM TO LOVE YOU TOO!

Welcome to AWESOME, Population = YOU!

I get it, people generally dread meetings, meetings suck... yadayadayada.... Well, if you find this meeting to be a bore, look at the picture above. Take a mental vacation and realize that all of our meetings have one purpose. To enable us make our grounds look like that! Pull it together, and bring your mind back to the reality that our dreaded meeting is meant to make us constantly better! If our meeting sucks, well, I guess I suck. Jared. How many meetings have their own newsletter? GROUNDS DOES!

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WE'RE ON A DATE - DEC. 6, 2013

GARDENS LOVE ME I'LL TEACH THEM TO LOVE YOU TOO!

Dealing with our Fear Head Stuck in a Hole?

Why does Grounds have a meeting Newsletter? For You!

If not dealt with, things we fear are things we do poorly. Know your fears. We need to know what our fears are before we can face them. Do you know what yours are? One way to gure some of them out is to also know some of your strengths. !

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For example; I'm full of ideas, they come to me constantly, day or night, good or bad, I have a lot of them!! What do I fear?! I fear all of my ideas because this can potentially lead me to not get anything done at all. If I have a new idea every minute and every idea could create 2 weeks worth of work, how do I get anything done? How do I start anything when everything is so darn exciting?! What's the point? A million half done jobs, Jared never gets anything done.... Jared's lazy.... BINGO! There it is. My fear! I'm worried about people's perception of me because I have so many ideas.! So, is it better for me to just put all of my thoughts and ideas in a closet and shut them out, or pick one really good idea and pursue it through to completion?! Imagine, all of my ideas and I fear that people might think I'm a failure.! Crazy, yet, reality.!

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Face your fears and take concrete action to overcome the potential problems before they happen.! Fear: Laziness because I don't know which idea to pursue.! Solution: Filter bad ideas, match good ideas with a suitable time and place to be fullled in my life.! Action: Be ready to plan and execute the chosen idea when the timing is right. Focus on one thing at a time, le other ideas away until the idea has been completed.!

Meetings can be similar to eating chalk, rather dry. Since we're gonna eat chalk anyway, consider this newsletter as bit of a garnish. Flavour for your chalk. - Jared

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WE'RE ON A DATE - DEC. 6, 2013

GARDENS LOVE ME I'LL TEACH THEM TO LOVE YOU TOO!

Natural Target Pruning - An update !

Since the cancelation of the anticipated tree pruning day there has been a new development. I've been asked by the Good Life Institute to conduct a 1 day course around the end of April 2014. This is a good opportunity to prepare a short tree care course that we can use for our own training. We will cover small tree and shrub care and leave the large tree care to the specialists.! This should give everyone an enhanced knowledge regarding how to properly prune different species of trees.! For now, remember this basic principal; An oak seedling will always grow up to be an oak and we need to learn how to respect and work with that fact. That means pruning each tree as that tree needs to be pruned for it's optimal health.! We will learn the concept of Natural Target Pruning to care for our trees and shrubs, this method results in natural looking, lower maintenance trees. Yes, there are a variety of hedging and tree shaping techniques, however, these methods require constant maintenance and result in an increased workload. As a result, NTP is the method we will strive for as we care for Lakeland College trees.!

Build Community - Be Awesome Through Serving others, ALWAYS. !

We're likely not going to change the whole world, so should we let that reality check get us down? Should we give up? Do we really care? - Don't get down, don't give up and still care. Here's why. While we may not change the whole world, everyone of us has the capacity to change someone's world, even for just a moment. The way we welcome people on a daily basis, on the street, at work or in our homes; that is the world we can somewhat control. Serve the person in front of you, treat them like a king or queen. Always give your best in that moment to the person of attention, assume the best intentions about that person, never jump to conclusions, seek the truth. Treat everyone as your honoured guest, focus on them. Take yourself out of the equation; sure, a parent might not feel like changing a poopy diaper, but that doesn't matter. Diapers need to be changed for the good of the child just as we need to smile at a stranger for the good of the person in front of us, it makes for good relationships. With our own worries and jealousy cast aside, we can clearly see what others need. Change the world in front of you, focus on the positive, one person at a time, it's about all we can actually do.

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WE'RE ON A DATE - DEC. 6, 2013

GARDENS LOVE ME I'LL TEACH THEM TO LOVE YOU TOO!

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Idle - "without purpose or effect" !
EVERYONE - Make sure you have read the build community article before continuing to read. Put your personal pride and feelings aside and compassionately consider the following; The abuse of fossil fuels is well know. Therefore, vehicles will not be permitted to run for 5 minutes or longer without good reason. We will not let engines run, unused for hours, this is bad practice and will stop. However, guidelines must be followed and respected by people on all sides of this issue. Are we 'idling' our vehicles with no purpose or effect when the weather turns cold? When we are clearing snow, no we're not. Keeping oneself warm and safe enables workers to perform effectively. This directly results in the safety of others, this is not purposeless or effect-less. Think about some of the not so obvious effects of cold weather, campus safety and equipment: Break downs - Cold equipment is prone to breaking down and with some of our VERY OLD equipment it simply won't start again, costing a lot of time and money. This shouldn't happen. Windows fog - Small Diesel engines on a lot grounds equipment have a difficult time keeping themselves warm enough to defrost their own windows (including a bobcat on a cold day). When they get shut off for even 5 minutes the windows quickly frost up disabling our ability to work. This shouldn't happen. Injuries - People slip and seriously injure themselves frequently during the winter months. What if this was the result of a worker who was seriously cold and unable to work as quickly as they were expected and needed to because of cold equipment? This has happened and the college has been sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars. This absolutely should never happen. Staff morale - People have been shutting off 'idling' vehicles that aren't theirs and leaving the keys on the seat. This should never happen, for all the reasons listed above and one more - it's rude. Workers are humans and should be treated as such, respect them, they will respect you, talk to them - not behind their back. The simple action of shutting off someone else's work vehicle kills morale, and not just the operators either. Taking the time to go out of ones way to shut off vehicles assumes the worst of our workers and no one is left happy. Respect yourself and others, don't assume the worst about a person. If a person truly does have the worst of intentions, don't worry, discipline will happen when behaviour is revealed. Unless we really want to make people mad, don't attempt to take someone else's job into your own hands. When the temperatures turn below -5 degrees C, our equipment will run a little more. Staff is working hard, their ability to keep everyone safe is priority. If you know that our idling rules are being abused, please contact Jared at: (780)872-9687 or e-mail: jared.fehr@lakelandcollege.ca
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