Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2017 – Pull Pots from Main Street, Barricades, Compost Pile, Cassi’s last day of work, Liriope beds

Now that the Nauvoo Pageant is gone and School starting soon, the busy summer season in Old Nauvoo is over. The last of the summer employees will be gone by the end of the week. Soon there won’t even be enough help to water all of the planters and pots. So, today Richard had his grounds crew remove about half of the beautiful terracotta pots that were lining Old Main street.

Along with the pretty flower pots, the barricades that helped control traffic and parking for the busy season had to be removed too. All of those beautiful flower pots went to the compost pile and the barricades were put away and stored until next June.

It seems such a shame to throw away all of those beautiful flowers but I have to keep reminding myself that they would all be dead anyway with the first frost in October. When we unloaded the pots at the compost pile it made me want to cry but they have served their purpose, they were beautiful all summer and now it is time for them to go.

Our next project was weeding and cleaning the flowerbeds of the homes the Temple Missionaries live in. All of the Temple housing is down on “The Flats” in Old Nauvoo. The flowerbeds are really low maintenance, we only have to weed them every month or two.

 After our lunch break Elder Kyle Johnson, Elder Cantwell and I went back to the Liriope (Lily Grass) beds at the Visitor’s Center to continue pulling weeds and pulling tree saplings. The Liriope bed project has been ongoing since summer began and it is so big and extensive I wonder if we will ever finish. But we are getting better and faster. We used to isolate the small tree saplings, cut them off and poison the stem so they would completely die. But thanks to a suggestion by Richard we use pliers to get a firm hold of the little stem and we are able to pull them out of the ground roots and all. The process of volunteer tree removal is much fast now.