Thursday, October 19, 2017 – Weeding at Hawkins Home & Browning Gun, Planting Bulbs in Diagonal Sidewalk- Visitor’s Ctr- Lyon Drug, Kettle Corn

We had a very full and busy day on the grounds of Old Nauvoo. We started at the home where Elder & Sis. Hawkins live. We weeded, cleaned, trimmed the hedges and took out a huge “Rogue Tree” from their front deck. It was evident that this volunteer “Rogue Tree” has been cut back many times in the past. The stump was a mass of old pruned limbs. Had we only pruned it back again it would have survived and returned to sprout up next season. But, this time we used “Tordon,” a tree stump poison that not only kills the stump but goes all the way down and kills the roots too. I’ve literally killed thousands of volunteer trees with “Tordon” in the past year.

After the Hawkins’ home we weeded in the gardens behind Jonathan Browning Home until Richard finished placing bulbs at the Diagonal Sidewalk. The Diagonal Sidewalk is an area is done differently than other flowerbeds like those in the Women’s Garden. Any time an area to be planting has perennials already growing, all of the new bulbs are planted in clusters of 6 to a dozen all along the sidewalk. These clusters of bulbs are planted all over, at random spots anywhere there is room. The end result will be a kaleidoscope of color all along the sidewalk. It will be breathtaking.

We finished our bulb planting in the two large perennial flowerbeds north of the Visitor’s Center and at the Lyon Drug. Both of these locations get the “Cluster of bulbs” technique as there are so many other perennial flowers already there. Using bulbs in perennial flowerbeds have two benefits. First the Tulips, Jonquils, Hyacinth, Crocus and Alliums all bloom earlier in the spring than most of the perennials so the beauty of the garden starts earlier and last longer through the summer. Very nice.

The second benefit of planting clusters of bulbs in the perennial gardens is their longevity. All of these bulbs like Tulips, Jonquils, Hyacinth, Crocus and Alliums don’t have to be removed from the perennial flowerbeds at the end of their blooming season. They will all be left in the ground year after year to multiply and continue to grace these perennial flowerbeds with early spring flowers.

At the end of the day we parked our van and trailer and noticed a wonderful aroma coming from the warehouse upwind a few hundred feet away. It was the unmistakable, mouthwatering smell of fresh kettle corn being popped. We discovered the Elders and Sisters in charge of supplying “Boo-tiful Nauvoo” with bags of kettle corn, had fired up the cookers to do a practice run to make sure they had the kettle corn recipe correct.

Well yes, they got the recipe right and they shared some of its goodness with all of us on the grounds crew. Next Saturday the “Kettle Corn Committee” will start the cookers in earnest and produce hundreds of bags of kettle corn to be handed out at the “Boo-tiful Nauvoo” community parade and festival.