Wednesday, April 12, 2017 – Elder & Sis. Lowe, Pageant Office Flowerbed, Women’s Garden weeding, Deer Damage

This morning was our weekly Mission Training Meeting and President Hall was our only speaker. He gave us a thorough, in-depth report on the visit last week by the members of the Church Missionary Department and the Church History Department. It was exciting and at the same time a little scary to hear some of the changes that will be coming to the mission. Exciting, because the team of “Middle Management” folks from Salt Lake will be updating our tours, correcting some of the errors, and addressing some of the many concerns we seniors have. Scary, because we may have to implement the changes and it’s hard to train an old dog new tricks.

This morning we assisted Richard in planting Day Lily plants in the new flowerbeds around the Pageant Office that were installed yesterday. This is only the first of several steps of planting that will go on at the Pageant Office over the course of the next month. After the last threat of frost, usually around Mother’s Day, we will be planting the colorful annual plants in the flowerbeds.

The rest of our work day we spent pulling weeds in the Women’s Garden behind the Visitor’s Center. Like yesterday’s cleaning of the “Land and Records” office, the flowerbeds in the Women’s Garden are full of weeds. Again, the most predominate weed is the “Noxious” Henbit. They were tangled and intertwined with all of the beautiful Tulips and other flowers. Every one of them has to be carefully and meticulously pulled by hand.

While we working in the Women’s Garden we noticed extensive deer damage to one spot in the Tulip beds. There were several sets (at least four) of fresh deer tracks through the Tulip beds. One of the tulip beds had dozens of Tulip heads eaten off. Richard commented that it is time to re-apply the deer repellent again.