Some of this and some of that!

Tonight while Peter and Kev work at the other end of the office I'll try and get another posting done. I can still faintly smell the aroma of our visit to the Alberta Foundry earlier today. Late this afternoon the three of us left the office early to drive out to Mirror to pick out a light standard for the front concrete pad here at the station. We've seen their work here in Lacombe on our downtown street signs and in Ponoka as well. Peter's been in touch with the owner (Ed) to find out if we could see what he has in stock for street lights. Since he didn't have much for us to see, Peter sat down with him to design something. They sat down at an old table (I think this was HIS office) covered with unfinished business papers and designed something on the back of a scrap of paper that will hopefully meet our requirements and wishes. Now Ed will come up with a light pole to scale and show us before we make a final decision.

Walking into the foundry this afternoon I found myself rushing back to uncounted visits to the Blacksmith shop in Heritage Park. And more recently a cool winter's morning trip to our own blacksmith shop here in Lacombe for a mortgage burning ceremony. There is no scent that remains like the aroma that comes from an age worn building that has witnessed the shodding of horses long gone and the repairing of wagons now shrinking to nothingness behind long unused barns. There is no scent that refuses to disappear, even after walking out into the bright sunny air of a late spring afternoon, like the one that makes it's home in the dark and sooty foundry shop.

This afternoon Border Paving came to finalize the preparations for pavement next week in our parking lot. Everyone in the building is anxious to have it done! Gravel was hauled in and spread around and packed to make sure the grade is one that drains the rain (and melting snow!) where we want it to go - out to the street.

We've been waiting for this all winter!

But even more exciting than this was the arrival of trees last night! We've had a number of trees tagged and potted for us at Centennial Rose Gardens just north of town. Shaun of Trimmed Line brought in five of the largest ones for us with his tree spade. We'll need to pick up more on the weekend that are potted. Last week we brought home eight Columnar Aspens from Costco in the back of the truck. A trip that normally take about 20 minutes took us 45. We had to find every back road possible that would lead us north (and get us across the river) and home. We lost no branches and we still had all the tags labelling the trees and giving us instructions on caring for our new trees. "First step in caring for your tree - DO NOT DRIVE 120 DOWN THE QE2 WITH THIS TREE STANDING IN THE BACK OF YOUR PICK-UP."

Out goes the sign post!

In goes the tree!

Watching- sort of!

Water - fertilize and MORE WATER!

It sure feel good to do some planning and work outside! Before you know it we will need to have it all done - so we have to get moving if we want to meet our deadline!