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Flower power: Watering is a peaceful job
By Alex Powers, Staff Photographer
Thursday, August 21, 2008 | No comments posted.
Going to school and doing yard work for one’s parents is certainly not the way every youth wants to spend summer vacation.
Reading, writing and math. Laying compost and edging lawns. These don’t equate for most young people.
Many would cringe at the thought, but Ashley Miller confronts tedium with a water gun in hand.
Each morning, the Coos Bay college student climbs out of bed around 6 a.m. She fills a tank with about 200 gallons of water, and tows the watering gear via ATV to Coos Bay City Hall. She starts there and putts across Central Avenue, toward Broadway, sprinkling water into 60 decorative hanging planters around downtown.
Or is it closer to 70? Miller has never bothered counting the number of pots.
“I don’t know if I really want to know,” she confessed.
This is how it’s been for Miller since her father Rex’s Coos Bay company, Agri-Tech Design, received a contract from the city for watering the plants in June.
Miller has two brothers who walk the length of the NW Natural gas pipeline from Roseburg to Coos Bay, clearing shrubbery and watching for leaks, and her father handles Agri-Tech’s normal business.
“We usually don’t water plants,” she admitted. “This is kind of an odd job.”
It’s time-consuming.
“You wouldn’t think it takes two hours to water them, but it does,” she said. “They take a lot of water.”
However, Miller doesn’t mind. She actually enjoys the peaceful morning hours.
“No, I like this job,” she said.
Miller is typically done by 9 a.m. Then it’s off to a summer math class at Southwestern Oregon Community College, where she is trying to complete core classes for an associate’s degree. She’ll be watering the plants in downtown through September or October — well past the start of her sophomore year at the college.
But school won’t deter her from duty. The plants come before her morning classes.
“I waited till two o’clock in the afternoon one day,” Miller explained. “But they have to be watered every 24 hours. They start wilting.”
Come winter, the flowers — an assortment of petunias and other summertime blooms — will wilt away completely. Next spring, with the blossoming of tourist season and a subsequent desire to make downtown attractive, the baskets will be replanted. And Ashley Miller hopes to retake her post, spending her summer mornings alongside the city’s ever-thirsty flowers, filling their pots with water.
“I think they’re pretty much stuck hand-watering these,” she mused.
Reading, writing and math. Laying compost and edging lawns. These don’t equate for most young people.
Many would cringe at the thought, but Ashley Miller confronts tedium with a water gun in hand.
Each morning, the Coos Bay college student climbs out of bed around 6 a.m. She fills a tank with about 200 gallons of water, and tows the watering gear via ATV to Coos Bay City Hall. She starts there and putts across Central Avenue, toward Broadway, sprinkling water into 60 decorative hanging planters around downtown.
Or is it closer to 70? Miller has never bothered counting the number of pots.
“I don’t know if I really want to know,” she confessed.
This is how it’s been for Miller since her father Rex’s Coos Bay company, Agri-Tech Design, received a contract from the city for watering the plants in June.
Miller has two brothers who walk the length of the NW Natural gas pipeline from Roseburg to Coos Bay, clearing shrubbery and watching for leaks, and her father handles Agri-Tech’s normal business.
“We usually don’t water plants,” she admitted. “This is kind of an odd job.”
It’s time-consuming.
“You wouldn’t think it takes two hours to water them, but it does,” she said. “They take a lot of water.”
However, Miller doesn’t mind. She actually enjoys the peaceful morning hours.
“No, I like this job,” she said.
Miller is typically done by 9 a.m. Then it’s off to a summer math class at Southwestern Oregon Community College, where she is trying to complete core classes for an associate’s degree. She’ll be watering the plants in downtown through September or October — well past the start of her sophomore year at the college.
But school won’t deter her from duty. The plants come before her morning classes.
“I waited till two o’clock in the afternoon one day,” Miller explained. “But they have to be watered every 24 hours. They start wilting.”
Come winter, the flowers — an assortment of petunias and other summertime blooms — will wilt away completely. Next spring, with the blossoming of tourist season and a subsequent desire to make downtown attractive, the baskets will be replanted. And Ashley Miller hopes to retake her post, spending her summer mornings alongside the city’s ever-thirsty flowers, filling their pots with water.
“I think they’re pretty much stuck hand-watering these,” she mused.
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