CASSOPOLIS — Ginger Luxenberger, the village’s one-woman beautification committee, lived in Dowagiac, but grew up at Diamond Lake and returned in 1981, so this is home.
As she improves landscaping downtown and at Stone Lake, she has focused her efforts on three spots — outside the Pioneer Log Cabin Museum and its Lewis Cass historical marker, an adjacent planter around an old fountain between the cabin and the boardwalk and the cobblestone walkway that runs alongside Hayden Hardware.
She could do more if she had some help and is trying to identify additional volunteers. Call her at 445-0196.
“I kind of identified the walkway to weed,” said Luxenberger, 77. “I’m usually down here every day, one place or the other.”
There is a table shaded by a multicolored umbrella and room for another where pedestrians could rest or eat lunch, with street lights and trees lining it to the parking behind stores.
“It’s very pretty when flowers start blooming,” she said.
At the bed overlooking Stone Lake, lit by red tulips, she said, “I cleaned it up and planted flowers, which most of the time I get someone to donate or I divide something I have. These areas, to me, could be so pretty and an advantage to this village. It would be sad to see nothing done. There was a garden club, but not right now.
“Ron Bass was nice about letting me put mulch down and picking up things I gathered” while weeding. “He cut all this down so we could see the lake” before his sudden death April 9.
“The bank is packed with myrtle. There are all kinds of possibilities in this community. There’s a walk that goes through the woods and comes out by the park downtown that could be developed. There’s still a beach here that could be cleaned up. Cass County Bass Club offered to build a fishing pier, but it would be the village’s responsibility to put in and take out.
“My next job I want to do is the stones around the gazebo. I want to dig that up and put in hostas. I’ve seen people use the picnic tables” on the deck behind it.
“Hopefully, as things become more beautiful, people will stop. The Log Cabin hadn’t been open because it didn’t have insurance, but now it does under the village.”