MASTER GARDENER CLASSES CONTINUE

HELLO FROM THE GARDEN HOME! This has been an extremely busy week here at the garden home both inside, outside and "off site". I attended the Master Gardener classes both Tuesday & Thursday this past week as well as spending some 2.75-hours at the WTREC doing some volunteer hours there. On Tuesday, our speaker was out with the flu and in lieu of a regular 3 hour class, we spent an hour talking with our director and some were asking garden questions in relationship to their specific needs/garden problems. About 3 of us in the class were adding our input to the answers and using our experiences to assist as well. Then as we were about to dismiss for the remainder of class time there was a call from the research center, asking for volunteers for the day. As I already had the class time committed anyway and we were leaving early, I went out there immediately. I spent the next few hours splitting and potting many varieties of day lilies. When that project was finished my next assignment was to go rake and pick up pine cones from the white pine grove after the rain storm over the previous weekend so the mowers could mow without cones and straw on the vast open field space. FYI: One should not mow over pine cones as it will not only dull your mower blade but can throw the cones so hard and far as to cause personal injury or break glass.
On Thursday we had a speaker who was a retired botanist/plant scientist who gave us 3 solid hours of botany. Now you must remember I have not been in a real classroom situation for many, many years and by the end of the 2ND hour this Master Gardener intern was dancing in my seat with the want and need to be out of the classroom and just moving - somewhere. Anywhere! But the time was well spent and the learning process has truly begun. This upcoming Thursday, which was to be a "free week" with no class, we will have the make-up from the previous missed Tuesday. We are meeting out at WTREC for the class with a tour of the gardens and the class subject is landscape design. I am really looking forward to this one as I have some good ideas I would like to see at my middle brother & sister-in-laws lakeside home.
Work remains constant here at the garden home as I continue with my overhaul of the physical appearance of both the interior and exterior of my home. I am on time out from work this week now and have many projects not only started but hopefully coming to completion this week I hope and plan. My new front door is scheduled for installation on Tuesday & I will be updating you as time and opportunity allows. Much to do and time is NOT standing still for this busy gardener. There was a neighborhood-wide yard sale on Saturday this weekend with approximately some 50 homes participating. I still have the yard award sign in my front yard and I did as many "garden tours" and spent time answering gardening questions as I did trying to work my yard sale items. I even had folks trying to buy up my own yard items as my "WELCOME" sign and my first concrete leaf casting I shared with you followers I made. So I gave out some contact cards I had made for myself and told some people I could meet with them and make them some casting for their yard. That might be fun to see other yards as I give them some consultations as well. I think I can count these consultations as part of my "teaching" required hours for my certification time for the Master Gardener internship. GREAT!
I leave you today as I head back into the painting in my master bedroom with this one thought from the Bible for your garden: “The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him: the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chestnut trees were not like his branches; nor any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty.”