Last Week of April 2012

 Mike has been really busy on the grounds.  He has been cleaning up sand along the roadsides.  He spent several days running what they non-affectionately call the "man beater."  It is a power broom, but there are no bristles on it.  It has paddles.  They use it to get the sand (left over from winter) from off of the sides of the roads.  They have to "broom" it up onto the road, then they take a big sweeper (that's on the front of the tractor) and sweep it into piles and then shovel it into the bucket of the front end loader and drive it up to the shop and dump it.  It took about 2 weeks to get the sides of the roads clean.  He didn't take any before-and-after pictures of the lane, but he did take these awesome pictures of the bumble bee that you see here.  We have a lot of bumble bees and they love our flowers.  This bee is on the Azaleas by the church.  The next picture is a wildflower that Mike discovered this week when he was cleaning up leaves and limbs in a little grove of trees.  He came and got me and took me to see it.  We don't know the name of it, but there are several of them growing here on the property. Tim told Mike that it is protected and you can't dig or transplant them or anything.  It certainly has a beautiful color.

The most exciting thing that happened to Mike this week (though he wasn't a bit excited about it) was that he found a tick on his leg after spending a day working on the grounds.  It didn't traumatize him like it would have done me because he used to get them when he was a young kid in Minnesota.  He said they had a "tick check" every night before bed. 

Mike took the next picture of Elder Starley and me by the pulpet we have been working on.  Elder Starley built it, and I put the finish on it.  He made a stool with carpet on top. (left front of picture -but it's not as large as it looks in this picture)  The stool slides in and out so the children can stand on it and be tall enough to speak into the microphone when they say the prayer or give a talk.  As you can guess, it was made for the Primary Room at the church. Mike rode with it down to the church to keep it from tipping over.  (See picture below)

If you look to the top right corner of the picture you can see the trees in the lane.  Now that Mike, Levoy and Gene have removed all of the sand around the trees they will spend the next week or more spreading a thin layer of mulch around all of them.  There is a lane going in and a lane going out and both lanes are lined with maple trees.  As you can see they are just starting to turn green. We are all smiling about having this project finished. 

We have had a week of cold windy weather but it is supposed to be better next week.  It snowed a few flakes the day these pictures were taken. WE HOPE YOU ARE ENJOYING WHATEVER WEATHER YOU ARE HAVING AND WE SEND OUR LOVE.