A whirlwind of activity, and the 2015 State MG conference is almost here!

This was a first for me in a while, a whole week (albeit a short one with the holiday) where I did not leave the office once!  I even brought my lunch.  Unless something arises that we haven’t thought of, I think we have every I dotted and every T crossed.  I have signed hundreds of length of service awards–when we get volunteers, we are definitely keeping them.  While we have the most in the 5 and 10 year category, we have a large group of lifetime (15) and a good amount of 20 and even some 25 year members.  Way to go Arkansas MGs.

We are down to the wire.  Monday we do a Sam’s run and Tuesday we load and start delivering. I have to say, it is quite nice to be less than 30 minutes from our conference site versus two or three hours.  We can run back and forth easily.  By now, everyone who is registered should have gotten a letter or email from me.  I have also had last-minute cancellations and we are trying to fill those on the wait list, but Monday it all stops and we have to go with what we have.

We have also had a whirlwind of activity for the Saturday MG training which starts June 13.  We have over 50 people from 6 counties.  This is becoming quite a popular program!

I did get to walk the garden when I got home and I am a bit amazed by all the work I need to do.  I hope it doesn’t rain all weekend. I need to prune some of the spring blooming azaleas and viburnum.  I also found one puny bloom, with two more coming on one of the big leaf hydrangeas I am considering pulling. Maybe it is trying to justify its place in the garden. Two others have no blooms showing, so I am planning on digging them up, but when I have time. I have the first blooms open on a new bush David Austin rose I was sent, and the climber will have open blooms soon. The leaves on these are totally clean of disease as they are on the Flower Carpet, Knock-out, and Drift rose, but the Oso Easy yellow is covered in leaf spot.   I plan to shear it back and see what happens.

Our local family of robins are back with their second batch–three more babies soon to leave the nest.  I think she is saying “I need a vacation”.  This is the first time we have seen Mom and Dad feeding the babies together in the nest.  We are getting siding soon, so we have cautioned the folks to work around the babies.  Hopefully they will be out of the nest and we can put the nest back up when the work is done.