A Big Thank You

It has been a fast summer, I can't believe it is winding down already.  We are in the process of getting the boy packed and back to school this week.  And this leads me to this post.

Last visit to the golf course before leaving for school.  Has to catch that last Pokémon

I want to say a big Thank You to our landscape person for the last three seasons, as she now leaves us to get started in her career field.  Leah, started with us 3 summers ago cleaning up our landscape beds.  Our previous person had stepped away 2 seasons before after well over 10 years here.  We thought by setting aside a little time each week we could stay on top of our beds, even though we had too many.  We found out quickly that we could not really devote the attention to the beds properly.  We did remove a couple but not enough.  The next spring Leah just happened to turn in an application that I luckily came across since it wasn't forwarded to us like most applications looking for golf maintenance work are.  Hers was listing gardening as the main job she was looking to do. 

Despite no formal work in the field, her major is what led me to interview her, (which she has a previous summer employee to thank for as well, I would say 2 of my top 3 seasonal help in my past 12 years here were music majors).  Most of her landscape experience was from working around her home, learning from her mom.  Her major was music education, as we talked, she had done marching band in high school and college, and I knew from that experience she had the work ethic needed.

Leah worked hard that first summer getting our beds back into shape, so much so, that she hadn't even practiced her instrument.  She finally came to me that mid July asking if she could cut back on her schedule to work on her craft.  Of course I easily agreed since she had got caught up on all our beds.  For the next two seasons she has worked part time and still has kept our beds clean, and even introduced some new plant material.  We still rely on some of our perennial plants that have been in our beds for years to come up at different times of the season, but she has improved many other beds, using a similar philosophy. 

   

   Some many fine examples of her work.  All done with little input from me.  I just asked that they would be weed free, and mulched. 

 Much of the new plant material that was introduced was by the way of taking from plants from her mom's gardens. 








As Leah has started her new career as an assistant high school band director, I will certainly miss the fine work done on our beds.  But will also miss much talk of our one common interest outside of work, that of marching bands, and Drum Corp (marching's major league), it was always fun to share stories about shows we saw, as we usually were not attending the same competitions.  The rest of the crew just aren't interested in that. 

I wish her the best of luck, and please wish me luck on finding someone to carry on her work.

Thanks for reading!

Mel