Author: cpeacock@umich.edu

Members of SEMM volunteering at Detroit Public TV.

The Detroit Theater Organ Society has the Wurlitzer organ that was in the Fisher Theater when it first opened in 1928. It is housed in the Senate Theater on Michigan Avenue near Livernois. They host several concerts each year that help to defray the cost of maintaining this treasure.

For years we had been struggling to have a nice, green front yard. We could get it to be green in the early spring – when it was cool and wet and there were no leaves on the trees; but by July it was always brown, ugly and crunchy.

After spending thousands of dollars on chemical treatments, aeration, reseeding and twice a day watering, we finally consulted an expert who pointed out that we only had about a half-inch of of topsoil over a thick layer of clay and even if we fixed that, we had a good deal of the yard that was so deeply in the shade of the trees that we could never expect it to grow grass properly.

He recommended tearing out the grass and replacing it with perennials. We agreed and asked him for a quote – and that was the last we ever heard from him – I guess we scared him off. After a few weeks we called a different landscaper and asked him to quote what the first guy had suggested. We gave him the go-ahead on the spot and the next day his crew came out and sprayed Round-Up on the grass which quickly looked even deader than usual – because it was.

About three weeks later his crew showed up again, quickly removed the dead sod and planted the roses, irises, hostas and lilies you see in the pictures. I added the birdbath, a small cat sculpture and, when I got tired of watering it, a drip irrigation system that waters each plant directly, waters the potted plants on the porch and fills the birdbath.

I was concerned when everything seemed to die out during the winter and even more so in early May when the rhododendrons were already blooming and the rest still looked pretty dead.

What a difference two weeks made!

We highly recommend doing away with grass and putting in a big garden. When we’re sitting in the living room with the front door open we hear people walking by commenting favorably on our garden and saying what a good idea it was to get rid of the grass.

On June 13, 2013, our friend and former Free Press columnist Carol Teegardin had a book signing at Tongue’s Coffee House in downtown Wyandotte promoting her new book Strawberry about the stripper whose murder started a chain of events that toppled Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

After the RG we visited Merrell and Jerry Fortner in Lakeland

In January we went to Orlando for the Mid-Florida Mensa Gathering. As a bonus we spent a day at Epcot.

Every since emerging from bankruptcy, Lear has made a big deal of it’s holiday celebration.