Neil is Getting Things Done

The start of a new week with a team of 14 volunteers. Bud our director came out Monday morning to take a group picture of all of us. The camp is so excited to have us and it helps to energize the regular staff by us doing many jobs that they don't have time for in their regular day. The camp has a new maintenance manager, Neil who has been on the job for about 1 1/2 months and he has lots of plans to keep all of his SOOP volunteers busy. He is good at telling us the jobs and we can then pair off and go and get the jobs done. He might sometimes have difficulty keeping up to us with buying supplies.

Even with 5C mornings, Neil was determined not to wear long pants.

We meet at 8 am for devotions and our days instructions.

Stan helped the ladies pull down vines with the tractor from trees that otherwise would be choked. This one measured 200 feet.

The first two days I joined other green thumbs with weeding, planting and fertilizing in the plant beds in front of the office building. Continued with the yard cleanup the next day.

This plant bed is cleaned up and revitalized with some new plants.

Jim worked with several others at sorting and cleaning out junk in the plumbing area at the maintenance building. They moved electrical items to another area and culled old items to be discarded. The cleanup in the wood shop has just begun. Lots of organization still needed.

The outdoor camp map got cleaned and spiffed up with new LED light fixtures.

On Wednesday morning it was rather cold for Florida so Neil had an indoor job for all the ladies. We all went to the Cypress Meeting room and cleaned out a craft closet which the summer camp staff uses. What a job! It took all of us to organize it into categories and put it back into bins and boxes. Before everything was on the floor ... now organized and on shelves.  Amazing difference!

Coffee time is at 10 am for all of us volunteers and it doesn't matter where we are on the sprawling Lakewood grounds they all come. Stan always supplies the tangerines from the property here and we take turns bringing snacks. And they are not 15 minutes breaks!

On Thursday Sue, Lavonne and I volunteered to work with trimming the dead palmetto branches along the road heading to the dining hall. The morning did start off cool but by afternoon we had a very lovely day. We enjoyed the outdoors. The rest of the ladies washed windows in the office building.

On Wednesday and Thursday Jim worked with Dennis at building a roofed storage shelter for lumber attached to the wall of the woodworking shop. This should help to keep their wood stored off the ground and out of the rain. It was an enjoyable project to do.

Friday morning we went into to Brooksville to do our weekly grocery shopping. With doing most of our cooking from scratch we keep busy many evenings with one of us making something like bread, muffins, yogurt or cookies to share at coffee time.  

Saturday morning we went to see our friends at MDS in Homosassa Springs and had lunch with them at Seagrass Waterfront Restaurant. As a promotion, from the restaurant docks  Gulf Coast River Charters was offering a 30 minute ride on their pontoon boat and the boat captain helped us  spot manatee in the river. This was a nice extra activity which we had not expected. It was great to catch up with them all about what they are currently doing.

Can you imagine all this water flowing from a spring?

Have a good week.