Tuesday, September 27, 2016 – Pull Pots & Flower Beds from Carthage Visitor’s Center

The long awaited dreaded day has arrived. Today we pulled out and threw away all of the terracotta planters and all of the beautiful flower beds. Oh the tragedy, the mayhem and the carnage. Our beautiful flowers Sis. Johnson and I have cared for all summer at the Carthage Visitor’s Center are gone. We weren’t the only ones saddened by the heartbreaking scene; the other missionaries came out to watch with long faces at the painful event. 

This morning we hauled to the dump all of those beautiful flowers that lined the sidewalks of the visitor’s center. What a sad scene, about ten of us from FM arrived at about 8:00AM and we were done and cleaned up by 10:00AM. But never fear, we will return sometime in October with thousands of tulip bulbs. The flower beds will rise again in the spring like “The Phoenix”, ablaze in beautiful color once more.

The average first frost in Central Illinois is around the 20^th of October. But it can happen as early as the 20^th of September.  When it does happen, all of the beautiful flowers in Carthage would have been dead and flat of the ground overnight. So, in order to be proactive and maximize the staff resources available to the managers at FM, today was the best day to pull the plants because we had enough help to get in and out quickly and cause as little disruption to the guests of the visitor’s center as possible.