If you plant it, they will come

Kim and I had no idea what to expect about participating in the 16th annual Master Gardener Tour, being held this weekend in the Grimes School and Park Place Historic District.

I mean, after all, we'd never even been on the tour, much less participated in one.

So we held our collective breaths. When we first agreed to do this about seven weeks ago, we did it with the understanding that we weren't going to do much more than we already did with our gardens. We weren't going to throw tons of money at it, and we weren't going to buy anything extra for the yard that we didn't need or already have.

We partially succeeded in that. Our biggest expense, as it turned out, was grass seed. We've never had great lawns in our yards because of all the shade trees on the property, but this year, we gave it our best shot. I guess I spent close to $300 on 100 pounds of Kentucky 31 seed, and presto! We had a decent lawn.

A platoon of tourists fill our driveway.

 Kim, for her part, cultivated her English Cottage garden for the front of the house and the existing multi-variety garden in the back, giving us bee balm, a beauty berry bush, helianthus maximilians, spirea, sunflowers, zinnias, petunias, shasta daisies and any number of other plants. There's also a kitchen herb garden and a smallish vegetable garden.

But as the deadline approached, she became more wired than a Moog synthesizer. Weeds kept popping up without relief; the hibiscus weren't in bloom, and are we over-watering the peonies? In her eyes, nothing ever seemed like it was going to be ready in time. It had to be perfect, she reasoned, because people were paying $20 per ticket to take the tour. We can't disappoint them.

Pressure.

Then yesterday finally arrived. The sun was shining; the skies were clear and blue; the oppressive temperatures of the week before now hovered in the bearable low 80s. Our greeter, Frankie Sisk, and docent, Peggy Walser, arrived, and we were ready to go.

Almost from the start, tour customers started arriving. And kept coming. At one point, I noticed people were walking from Breeden Insurance, where they could purchase tickets, then cross Center Street, march across the field at Mountcastle Insurance, climb up a small but challenging slope and walk directly into our driveway. There was at least a platoon of them. They looked like the Marines assaulting Iwo Jima. They just kept coming and coming. I couldn't believe it.

I have no idea how many people showed up for the tour, but I reckon it was in the hundreds. And why not? It was a beautiful day.

And the best part for Kim and myself was seeing some old friends we haven't seen in a while: former colleagues from The Dispatch, where I worked, and former colleagues from LSB/Newbridge Bank, where both Kim and I worked.

We especially enjoyed overhearing some of the conversations from the tourists who whispered to each other how beautiful our yard looked. That was satisfying, especially after all the work we put into it.

More importantly, Kim and I hope the Master Gardeners make lots of money. This is their annual fundraiser, and one of the things they do is offer two $1000 college scholarships. Other money raised goes back into the community.

So there's still today to go. The weather forecast is identical to yesterday. It seems to me that this is going to be a good day to stop and smell the roses.