Moving Day

The Spring Gardens Nursery has been situated on a prime piece of real estate on FM 2920 for two years. Richard Gieseke, the owner of the nursery, has worked his little plot with his own hands while growing his business from a seedling and the acres of ground are covered with thousands of trees and bushes that he sells mostly to commercial landscapers. Across the street there are new strip centers filled with new businesses. Next door is a brand new, large emergency medical building to serve the fast-growing communities that surround it.

Richard's landlord took notice that his real estate has grown dramatically in value and has now decided that it should be leased to someone else with a higher profit potential. Richard's lease is finished on the 30^th of this month and the landlord is not willing to renew. Richard was devastated by the news. His nursery is covered with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of large commercial plants and he was on the brink of losing everything he'd worked for over the decades. He brought a plea to his brothers in church two weeks ago. “I need to ask for your help. I'm about to lose my nursery because the land owner refuses to renew my lease. I've found a new piece of property, only four miles away, but by the end of the month I need to have all of my plants moved to the new location and I need help moving all of my plants.” He set Saturday aside as his moving day and asked for as many volunteers as possible to come and help with the arduous move, not knowing whether anyone would even bother to show up. Richard had spent the previous week installing the huge irrigation system at his new site that would be needed to water the thousands of growing trees and shrubs.

On Saturday morning at nine o'clock a group of strong men and at least one strong woman appeared, some with their sons, at the nursery gate armed with gloves and an attitude to do whatever they needed to do in order to get the nursery moved. Before the commotion began it was hushed on the wide, flourishing forest of quiet beauty. A lark was singing mellifluously in the top of one of the huge Magnolia trees and it seemed as if the bustle of the road outside had vanished for a time. Then the moment was broken by big trucks moving into position to pick up their massive loads.

“One, two, three, lift!” Over and over the count rose up as men lifted the burdensome thirty gallon pots onto the trailers and into the tall vans. “Oh, no! I lost my glasses!” Brother Grabau had lifted one of the pots into the tall van and the tree had dragged his glasses from his face, flipping them deep inside the already dense load. They were buried somewhere in that sea of thick greenery inside the dark van. “I'll never find them in here! I can't see without them and it's too dark.” Ken Hubnik calmed him. “We'll tell the guys at the other end to keep their eyes open for them as they unload the van.”

Dustin Hubnik, all 40 pounds of him, huffed and puffed to drag a giant 70 pound pot down the aisle. “Dustin! You can do better than that! Put some breakfast into it!” someone called. “I think it would help if you weighted 200 pounds, like most of the rest of us,” someone else said. Dustin only attempted the task once but his observation of this service project was teaching him a valuable lesson.

“Fire ants! They're biting me!” A new caution was raised to everyone in the crowd and the rest of the men began to examine their feet to see if they were standing in a fire ant bed. “Bruce! Hold still!” A quick swipe of a glove brushed a large black spider from his shirt back onto the ground. “Watch out for snakes, too.”

For several hours the group pushed, pulled, dragged and lifted the heavy pots, covering themselves with the dark, stinky mud that continually splashed from the black weed mats covering the ground. Truck after truck moved the big trees out of the gate and toward their new home. By lunch time it was hard to tell whether it was the thick, black mud or the soaking perspiration that raised the mightiest stench, but no one felt burdened by the work. The brothers chatted about their work and about the upcoming game. Everyone chatted about the things that made them smile between the shouts of “One! Two! Three! Lift!”

Brother Grabau recovered his glasses because someone unloading at the other end spotted them when they fell from one of the trees coming out of the van. In the end, service is something we love to do and what makes it even better is that we do it as a matter of personal choice. We give up a Saturday morning at home in favor of helping a brother in real need. No one has to cajole us. No one has to pay us. No one has to legislate or regulate us. We do it purely out of love. It's what makes us great as Americans and as Latter-day Saints and it's just what friends do.