Tuesday, September 06, 2016 – Acorns, Former Grounds Keepers, Flagstone Repair

This morning I used the leaf blower to clean the parking lot of the Carthage Visitor’s Center.  In the past I’m only blown leaves and twigs and I would get done in about an hour and a half.  But today it took me almost three hours because there is a new type of debris from the trees, acorns. There were thousands of them to push with the leaf blower.  The worst part is the way they roll, because of their shape they don’t roll in a straight line; they want to roll in a circle. Trying to get those acorns to one side of the parking lot so I could pick them up reminded me of “herding cats,” it’s nearly impossible!

People stop to talk to Sis. Johnson and I all the time while we are working on the grounds of the visitor’s center. Today an elderly couple came over to me and said how nice the grounds looked.  The husband’s name was Jack Clark and they were from Alabama.  He told me how beautiful everything was and he said he could really appreciate our hard work.  He said he knew how much work it was because fifteen years ago he was the grounds keeper at the Carthage Visitor’s Center!

Both Bro. & Sis. Clark were very kind, they complemented us and heaped on praise about the grounds. They commented on how beautiful the flower beds and the terracotta planters were. They said they’d never seen such big and beautiful flowers and foliage plants before. They were a very nice couple.

After I talked to Bro. & Sis. Clark for a while the rest of their family come out of the visitor’s center and visited for a while. The Clark’s are traveling with their daughter and her two sons.  One son attends BYU Idaho and the other has submitted his mission papers and is waiting for his call. They were all very nice folks.

My final job of the day was repairing a bad spot in the flagstone sidewalk. It’s a job that I’ve been wanting to do for some time but didn’t have the time or the right tools. Today was a perfect day. I had the time, I had the tools and I had some extra pieces of Flagstone for the repair. 

 

One thing that has been holding up the project was a way to cut the flagstone into the correct shape. But last Wednesday while I was at FM’s warehouse I talked to Kyle Combs, one of the assistant warehouse managers and he found a very old diamond circular saw blade I could use. The blade only had a sixteenth of an each of diamond cutting surface left. Someone had written on the side of the blade with a felt pen, “This may still work.” Well it worked perfectly and the finished stones and sidewalk look 100% better now.