Tomorrow is graduation here at Concordia Seminary and everyone has been working tirelessly to get the outdoors and indoors looking its best. Seriously, the way the staff works is just amazing. And they do it cheerfully. The grounds/landscape people which includes Gayle as the director of operations, and any number of seminary students to help her, have been going great guns.
We had the flower beds up by the chapel entrance filled with purple Alliums. But as we were standing around up there yesterday it was pretty obvious their day was over. So the question was, should we pull them out before graduation. They still had their big round ball heads on top of 4 foot tall stems, but no color. It was pull them and leave the area with nothing or....or what.
One of the students who works with Gayle is Zack Saurralt who also happens to be assigned to Holy Cross in Collinsville as a field worker. He mentioned that when he was in undergrad at Concordia Ann Arbor, a professor went out the night before graduation and spray painted spent flowers in red which is one of the school colors. We tossed that idea around and thought, why not try it. I went to our tool shed and found a can of yellow spray paint and we tried it.
It was perfect! I mean who knew? The color held up and the big flower head looked like new, just a different color from it's original. I jumped in the car and went to buy more yellow spray paint and a second student, Alarik Morris, who is also a field worker at Holy Cross did the painting. He stayed at it until he finished all four big beds. Today people who have gone by there were talking about how cool it was the Alliums changed color.
Holy Cross field workers for the win.


Who knew this would work? So fun