Another Good Night

I worked the Holiday Lights Show (HLS) last night (Sunday) and we had close to 700 attendees which was a very good Sunday night. The weather wasn't too cold although there wasn't much snow left from Saturday. The forecast doesn't look real good for snow prior to Christmas but the plus side of that is path safety and saved time and materials for keeping the paths clear of snow and ice. Mother Nature is in charge of that component of the HLS. I was able to take all the pictures in this blog last night and caught some better shots of the show. Tina B., one of our volunteer photographers, was out in the show taking shots as well and I look forward to the results of her efforts. To the left are Pat (left) and Big John (right) who were our trailwalking volunteers last night. We usually have a couple of trailwalkers to keep an eye on the show and make sure visitors are safe (and staying on the paths!). Note their matching man purses which have supplies (bulbs, flashlight, etc.) that might come in handy. We also had Hal and Doris out on the trails as well. Preliminary counts for the HLS attendance thus far hover around 3,200 which is a strong start. We need to keep up this momentum and hope for good crowds for the remaining 11 nights.

We had a good turnout of volunteers today. Pat and Urban were out pruning in the garden while Larry and Bill were also outside securing some of the HLS trees. Gary was in to print up more woody plant labels and Maury was in working on some details for our 2012 tree sale. Maury also took our recently donated truck (used) for re-lettering. This vehicle will be extremely handy and we'll retire/sell one of our other ones at some point. Dave, Vern, Bob A. and Jim worked on carpentry projects which included efforts on our horizontal PVC planters for next year. We also saw Kelli, Mary W., Ron W., Rollie, Bill O. and Dr. Gredler.

I'm on deck to work the HLS again tonight as Larry and I split up the evenings with each of us taking about 9 nights. In past years, we've had more of a need for our troubleshooting efforts but so far so good with the HLS in regards to power issues. I'm a bit nervous about some rain/sleet/slush coming Tuesday and Wednesday this week but we'll deal with that as it arrives.