With Mother’s Day just around the corner and a too-long winter finally receding from our landscape at a glacial pace, it’s time for the second annual Blossom Festival taking place Mother’s Day on Sunday at 11 a.m. at the Assiniboine Food Forest, aka. AFFI.

On a recent day, Dave Barnes, a founding member of AFFI, was in the sugar shack boiling syrup and shared a couple of sweet memories from the inaugural Blossom Festival that took place a year ago.

“People were excited. People were very happy, you know, to get a Mother’s Day flower, and Mother’s Day sweet treats on the house in the beautiful forest setting. It was a very nice day for sure,” Barnes said.

The first Blossom Festival drew 40 or so people, happy to be in the fresh air on the second Sunday in May, when the weather can be unpredictable. But Barnes said it was a beautiful time to be there.

Municipal leaders are calling on the federal government to accelerate the delivery of infrastructure funding, warning that a lack of urgency is hampering local economies as construction season begins.

Joe Masi, a Portage la Prairie city councillor and Manitoba director for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), said the recent federal spring economic update missed a critical opportunity to scale up investment for shovel-ready projects.

“We were looking for something to say, ‘OK, we’re really going to accelerate, get money out the door,’ because we’re into the construction season now,” Masi said. “FCM is going to have to continue to work with the federal government to scale up infrastructure over the next few months so that we can, as municipalities, succeed.”

The local priority remains the multi-million dollar expansion of the Portage la Prairie water treatment plant. The project has already secured $40 million from the provincial government, but the city is still awaiting word on an application for federal support through the Build Community Strong Fund.

If there’s one true thing you can say about Manitoba in the spring it’s this: the river is rising. On this day, Tobin Praznik, emergency manager for the City of Brandon has been watching it do just that.

“We’ve been keeping a close eye. The river’s been pretty dynamic over the last couple of days,” Praznik said.

And if that’s not enough to get you thinking about a contingency plan, May 3 to 9 is National Emergency Preparedness Week, a federally designated week to remind all Canadians that emergencies happen and readiness is imperative.

“Emergencies can happen at any time and without warning, that’s the reality. The benefit in preparing is it supports and ensures our safety as individuals and families,” Praznik said.

Music lovers, and especially jazz lovers, take note: April 30 is International Jazz Day, a perfect excuse to make a martini, slip some vinyl on the turntable and groove to the greats.

Eric Platz teaches jazz studies at Brandon University. The 50-something drummer originally from Boston, Massachusetts, said jazz history isn’t just about the past — it’s being forged right now, right here in Canada.

“From a historical standpoint there are a number of people from jazz history that would be very influential Canadian musicians. But at the same time, there are a lot of people now, a younger generation, that are having a tremendous influence on the music,” said Platz, a percussionist and improviser who plays jazz, Americana, world music, rock and classical.

Looking back, Platz picks out two influential giants of jazz: Kenny Wheeler (1930 - 2014) and Oscar Peterson (1925 - 2007), both Canadians.

Spring is finally here, and along with it a seasonal change to our at-home menus. And while the inclination might be to shift to nice cool salads, there’s no reason to completely give up on a nice bowl of soup made with chicken stock. Instead of preparing a huge pot that might last for a few meals, small-batch stock-making will let you enjoy the flavours and benefits of a single small pot with less effort than if you were filling your “winter-sized” stockpot.

Making stock in small, as-you-go batches has advantages. For a household of two to four people, it is made fresh and used up quickly. Prep time is reduced because you are using only a small amount of vegetables and other ingredients. Prepping and freezing ingredients for several small pots’ worth can be done in about 20 minutes.

One money-saving advantage is to pick up items like fresh, bulk chicken drumsticks. You can prep several small bags of chicken and vegetables all at once and divide it into small freezer bags. Five small bags of stock ingredients take up a fraction of the space that five one-litre containers of prepared stock would occupy in your freezer.

Here’s how to prep freezer bags of ingredients for small-batch stock-making. Chicken drumsticks are an ideal size. You’ll need two drumsticks for each small bag of ingredients. Into each bag place two drumsticks, one peeled and chunked carrot, one cleaned and chunked stick of celery and one half of a peeled onion. (This is also a good time to use up any of these vegetables before the end of their shelf life.)