kim wade, city hall's chauncey gardener

Everyone loves a flower. Kim Wade gives us bouquets. Of tulips. And advice. And to the public servants and citizens who pass by the thousand or so blooming tulips everyday at City Hall, she provides these to us for little more than a moment of our time. Small payment indeed, so that we might find moments of happiness in our cubicle world of deadlines, traffic snarls, and congestion.

Wade, whose area of expertise spans the gamut from children's literature to organic gardening (the secret is pulling all the weeds by hand!) to olde timey music and then some, maintains the grounds of Kansas City's City Hall and adjacent Municipal Court and Communications Center. Last fall when the mums were blooming Mayor Funkhouser was heard to remark, "in my twenty years of working at City Hall, it's never looked better."

Indeed. Citizens deserve as much. Here's to blooms, blossoms, and local color in places you don't expect to find it.