Whirlwind Tour

Today was the Mora Garden Club Bus Tour visit to our farm, an event which we have been looking forward to for a couple months.  The club was on its annual tour of interesting garden sites around Minnesota.   I  had warned them that we are not really a garden (yet) , but an actual small farm, run by beginners.
Nevertheless, I wanted everything to look as beautiful as possible.  Last week, I  purchased some end-of-season flowers to replace those that had not survived (mostly due to the darn chickens scratching them out, some due to benign neglect.) A few of them did not make it into the ground, so I scattered the pots in the flowers beds - but I  doubt the garden club was fooled.

Many things did not go according to plan - primarily, our lawn mower would not start this morning and the lawn REALLY needed to be mowed to look civilized.  Rog zipped to town and  bought a new battery charger and it still wouldn't start.  No neighbors with potential lawn mowers to borrow could be reached.  At the last minute, Rog got it going and was able to mow the main areas just before the bus arrived.

What a wonderful bunch of enthusiastic, friendly gardeners!  It was a hot steamy day, but I gave a short tour of our farm projects,  they shopped in the store and ate lunch on the patio.  Three friends,  Mara,  Julia and Lynn, helped and miraculously made everything go smoothly.

Love this lady's hat!  (She is eating a little tart made with our garden raspberries.)

The bus tour was a great  test run for whether we would ever want to promote regular events on our farm.  Hmm...maybe... but we definitely would need competent help (like my friends today) to pull it off.

After the tour departed, we had  raspberry-mint mojitos and lunch on the patio with our invaluable assistants.  Rog and I  hadn't gotten more than a few hours sleep last night, so as soon as everyone left, we collapsed in the hammock for a little snooze in the shade.

All in all, a very fine day.