Our store is open again! Debby and I painted and cleaned and rearranged for several weeks! I’m looking forward to seeing all our customers again!
Last week I presented a ‘Local Nursery History’ Powerpoint to the Concord Garden Club. These people have been going strong for over sixty years! They have a great location at the Concord Community Center across from Tripointe. I was able to tell them that Gilson Gardens started out on Prouty Road, in Concord!, in 1947! Mark’s parents and grandparents raised apples there and sold them at our current location on North Ridge Road in Perry. They also raised peaches at their next home on Hale Road in Painesville Township!
I may look a little nervous in the picture, but the Concord Garden Club is a friendly group! Also, this picture makes my hips look bigger than they really are, just so you know.
Mark and I enjoy doing presentations for local groups. Our presentations include:
Local Nursery History
Perennials: The Best of the Best
All Season Perennials
Nursery Immigration
Nurseries, Natives and Invasives
and more!
We had Tim and Sonia Brotzman, Brotzmans Nursery, over on Saturday night…great people! We know this is the last time we’ll be able to visit for a couple months! A week before that we entertained Dick and Suzie Shreve from Shreve’s Greenhouse in North Perry. And of course our Passport2Plants group meets every month with friends from Martins Nursery, Middle Ridge Gardens, and Sabos-Woodside. Mark attended the Nursery Growers dinner last week and visited with friends from Loselys, LCN, Arcola Creek, Farm Credit, and others. We have a tight and committed group of growers in Lake County! This Wednesday my card club will get together…all ladies…mostly owners of local nurseries and farms! The guys can talk at the Feed Mill or pesticide meetings…but we talk over Euchre!
The local Chamber of Commerce Awards Dinner last week was a lot of fun, as usual. I talked to our neighbors, the Wests, from across the street, and many other friends. Mark took his usual place, in front of the bar, and visited with Bob and Dee Aufuldish, Senator John Eklund, Township Trustees Rick Amos and Nancy Steele and Phil Haskell, Wally and Karen (former employee!) from Perry Township, Larry Advey (Madison Township), Brint from Rabbit Run…and many other local luminaries! Mark enjoys this stuff way too much…
We’re hoping our boys will come up from Columbus and visit for Easter! Matthew is in Salt Lake City right now…supposedly it’s a work trip for Honda… A few weeks ago he took his girlfriend to St Thomas, US Virgin Islands. They stayed at ‘Gallows Point’…where we took the boys in 1994. We’re hoping our boys will return the favor someday!