Tuesday, April 25, 2017 – Stone House, Covered Benches, Kiosk, Tulip & Daffodil Removal

It was a busy day for all of us on the Nauvoo grounds crew. We started by unloading all of the plants out of the basement of the “Stone House.” (See: Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2016) Last November we too all of the plants off of the outdoor shaded benches and put them in the basement of the Stone House. There isn’t room for all of the plants that need to winter-over in the greenhouses.  So the plants that are dormant or that can tolerate no sunlight are stored in the basement of the Stone House until Spring. 

Next we took a lot of plants out of the greenhouses and put them on the benches outdoors that have “Shade Cloth” over them. The idea here is to acclimate the plants, prepare them, harden them, etc. for the day they will be put out in the gardens. All of the plants in the greenhouses need some time to adjust to the cold evenings and the brighter sunlight. They will do much better after a few weeks outdoors under the shade cloth.

Our next project was to clean the flowerbeds at the “Tourist Information Kiosk” on the main highway coming into Nauvoo. Like so many of the flowerbeds, it had a lot of weeds that needed removal for the summer season.

 

Next we were back at the Visitor’s Center pulling Daffodil bulbs from two more flowerbeds. As is the case with so many of the bulbs we pull, they never make it to the compost pile. All of the bulbs we pull are available to anyone that wants them. These daffodil bulbs were on their way to a happy home as soon as we had them out of the ground. 

After lunch our last task for the day was pulling more weeds in the Women’s Garden. I think this is a job we will never ever finish. There seems to be a never ending supply of weeds to pull. Interestingly, one of the weeds we were pulling was a wild Onion and there were hundreds of them.

Today Richard told us of a family in Nauvoo with a 3 month old baby that died suddenly of SIDS. We were pulling the tulips out of the Women’s Garden and Sis. Johnson suggested that she make a bouquet of Tulips for the family and Richard could deliver them.