Thursday, November 10, 2016 – Cleaning the Women’s Garden, Lucy Mack Smith home, Stinging Nettle, Elder Ron Johnson’s home

Another full day of work for Sis. Johnson and I. We started by cleaning the Visitor’s Center and Women’s Garden. Our plan is to clean the visitor’s center and the Women’s Garden about twice a week. Mostly we will be blowing the leaves off of the sidewalks but today we had an additional assignment from our District Leader to also clean all of the statues. 

While we were there we discovered some damage. It appears that several deer crossed right through one of our tulip beds. Since the flowerbeds were roto-tilled, the soil is very soft and fluffy so the deer hoof prints went very deep. Several of the tulip bulbs were exposed but we got them re-covered with soil and the whole flowerbed looks fine again.

 

We have also heard that the deer like to eat tulip bulbs. In the winter when food is scarce, the deer will paw at the soil exposing the bulbs and eat them. We’ve also heard that Richard Hancock (our boss at FM) uses deer repellant on all of the flowerbeds in Old Nauvoo. Sis. Johnson and I may have to invest in some for the new tulip beds at our home.

Next we tackled a very large job. We cleaned the grounds at the Lucy Mack Smith home. However we discovered a problem when we did our original assessment of the project. We discovered a large patch of STINGING NETTLE. I’ve already had an unpleasant run in with Stinging Nettle this year and I don’t want to suffer the same consequences again.

 

I was very careful cutting and handling the Stinging Nettle this time. I wore disposable rubber gloves and I made sure that none of it touched any part of my clothes or tools. This time, removing Stinging Nettle was a much more pleasant experience.

Our next stop was at the home of Elder Ron & Sis. Renee Johnson. They had several large piles of yard work trimmings in their back yard that needed to be hauled off. We had room left in our trailer so we picked up their load. Sis. Johnson and I have been given a list of about two dozen missionary residences we will be cleaning over the next week or two. There is never a shortage of work.