Wednesday, January 11, 2017 – Mission-wide Training Meeting, Cuttings for rooting

This morning we had a very good mission training meeting. Our guest speaker was Jordan Bodily the Director of FM (Facilities Maintenance). He took the whole hour and spoke on a variety of subjects but mostly he helping us seniors understand the new rules about handling the artifacts in each of the historic sites. He explained exactly what can be handled by the missionaries, what can be handled by the guests and what cannot be handled by anyone.

What was so impressive to me is how knowledgeable Bro. Bodily is about the sites and the artifacts. And there is a reason; he helped write the book on the Nauvoo site artifacts. There is so much information about historic site artifacts it would take an expert to know it all. Well, Jordan Bodily is the expert and he does know it all. 

After our early morning training meeting Sis. Johnson and I worked with Richard in the greenhouses for the rest of the day. Again we cut, prepped and planted rooted cuttings in special trays. Each cutting has to be handled very carefully and trimmed with a specially sterilized razor blade to prevent plant diseases from infecting the new cuttings. The process is very tedious and time consuming. There is a lot left to do, we will probably be doing this for several more days.

Part of the process requires us to duplicate the name tag from each parent plant and put the new tag with the new cuttings. Each variety of Coleus has a unique name given to it. These names sound like they are given to the plant by the lab technician that developed the strain. It appears to me that he or she names the new strain anything they want.  I have found the names very interesting. Sometimes the names are of people or family names. Some plants had names like: Henna, Peter’s Wonder, Felix, and Beauty of Lyon.

 Sometimes they choose a descriptive name that they think describes the new strain. Many of the names are very colorful or majestic and have the effect of painting a mental image in the mind’s eye.   Names Like: Tiny red Toes, Pink Chaos, Lemon Giggle, Brownie Points, Fireworks, and Fishnet Stockings. 

Some of the Coleus plant names were funny like: “Dead Drunk” and “Criminal Barbie.” But my favorite name was a plant that looked like it had been splattered with blood, its name was “Murder Suspect!” So, judging by the names of the Coleus plants involved in the crime, it appears that “Criminal Barbie was “Dead Drunk” and is now the “Murder Suspect!”