Garden party

My manager Jack and his wife, Patti, who’s the administrator at our church, has most o us from work out to their condo in east Louisville (the first Saturday in September - the day after the Linda Mercadante talk). Jack actually grew up in Louisville and after going to grad school and teaching out of state he came back with Patti to work at the Presbyterian Center. (He and I were until recently two of three former sociology professors who worked in out unit – all men.) Jack and Patti lived in a suburban house probably two miles from our current house when they first moved (back – for Jack) to Louisville. But after a while they went small and in to a condo in an area which at that point was far out east – but is now considered a mid-range suburb. They have no children – just cats – but Jack also has a green thumb (he’s got a bunch of plants in his office.) Not only do they have a little patio and fenced in area around their condo, but Jack has also cultivated trees, shrubs, herbs, and all kind of plants in an arc between their quadriplex condo – which is on the end – and the road and a drainage ditch near their condo. He said initially the old condo board used to hassle them for everything he was doing – even though it was beautifying the condo complex area and filling in a buffer between the condo complex and the road and ditch. Now, the management company that took over has quit bothering him, and let him do his thing. It’s quite amazing everything he’s planted and gotten to thrive out there. For our long 10 days in Guatemala Jack came over to water our plants and check on our turtles, feed them, and change their water. I hoped he’d do this once or twice but, sure enough, he did just about every other do (which I should have expected). We talked about trying to get him to come out to our back yard and help us ID which plants were weeds (he knows an awful lot about plants). But that never worked out. Our predecessor at our house also had a green thumb – and many of the plants she cultivated still grow there. But by late summer weeds have also sprouted in the garden and various other places in the back yard – so much so that we can’t always tell which is which. If we had time and knowledge we wouldn’t necessarily cut back all of the weeds. But we’d trim everything down and probably go after some of the weeds. Didn’t see a lot of weeds in Jack and Patti’s current “yard,” however. (Pictured below are Jack, Stephanie, our new colleague Hilary, and Reg, husband of our other manager, Deborah.)

-- Perry