I was up visiting my good friend Traci Garff in Northern Utah for memorial day. She is the stake activity chair for her singles stake and she put together a service project here a week or so ago to go plant flowers on Temple Square. I went up to participate since I thought this sounded like a good service project to do. Once we got there I saw all the beautiful tulips that we are used to seeing at conference time, all still in full bloom and gorgeous, but then the head gardener instructed my group to go rip out all the tulips. It was fun, but I have to be honest, something felt innately wrong about ripping out flowers on the sacred temple grounds! ;) Oh, well, I had permission so I guess it was alright. I was just shocked because they were all soooo beautiful and looked perfectly fine to me, but I guess they pull them out, mulch them, and replant regularly so as to keep the grounds fresh.What was extra fun was as I was leaning over ripping out tulips, I felt someone looking over my shoulder and I turned around to see Elder L. Tom Perry in BYU sweats and a Utah State Aggies hat standing over me asking what in the world I was doing. Everyone laughed to see such a sport. I turned around and said, "You better high tail it out of here, or we'll put you to work too!" He just laughed. I got a picture with him.
