Back in October of 2011, my position at the forest preserve ended as the summer ended, and I needed a new job. I found and accepted one at Ball Horticulture. I worked as a breeder technician, where I pollinated petunias all day long. All. Day Long. If you know me, you'll understand that I got bored really quickly. There wasn't much variety in my day to day responsibilities. On top of that, the commute was slowly killing me! An hour each way was a pain, but in the winter it was absolutely terrible. I decided it was time for a change for those reasons and more. Luckily for me, I received an email immediately after applying for a position at a local park district!
On April 2nd, I started my first day as the Horticulture Supervisor for the park district. I was really nervous because I've never actually WORKED for a park district, just volunteered at one. Plus, I was coming in with limited to no knowledge on large equipment. Luckily, my new boss is really excited to have me in the position.
Since then, I have learned a TON! I even aerated the baseball fields a few weeks ago by myself on our New Holland tractor. We have 4 major parks/attractions that I worked on landscaping this summer, in addition to 45 playground parks that needed attention. Needless to say, I've been busy! I also had a crew of 10 high school/college age seasonals this summer. I really liked being back in the supervising role! The forest preserve and Ball had me down at the bottom of the barrel, and I didn't realize how much I missed it until starting here.
Fall is here, so my crew has dwindled to just 4, but we still have a lot to do! I plan on planting a couple thousand bulbs for spring, clearing out a few natural areas, and doing a lot of landscape planning.
I don't have many pictures, but here a few so this post isn't too boring! Soon I will take pictures of my fall plantings so you can be blown away by the number of mums I planted this year. Ha.
A little planting area in one of our parks. One of my seasonals nicknamed it Stone Hedge. I decided to make in a natural planting. Here is one of the pictures in mid summer.
This is the path at one of our smaller parks. There is a resident who was really upset about the condition of the path... lots of weeds, no clear lines. So for some reason, I decided to fix that! Over the course of a few weeks, we sprayed for weeds, put down a few hundred pounds of pre-emergent, edged the entire path, and laid a new layer of screening. Wish I could find a good picture of it after we overhauled it!
I'm really excited to be here and to see what else I can learn and do!!!
