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COMMUNITY
Corner flower garden blossoms with symbols of inspiration
Neighbors know Shep Slater’s flow
ers. They’re the bright blooms at the cor
ner of High Point Road and Windsor
Parkway that grow into symbols.
His flower garden has produced a
peace sign. It’s shown a six-pointed star.
This summer, it’s growing a pink ribbon
of 270 or so begonias that honors the
fight against breast cancer.
“Kids with their parents drive by and
wonder what I’m putting in next,” Slater
said, grinning and not telling.
Slater’s corner garden got its start
a dozen or so years ago as a flowering
heart.
In the beginning, Slater needed a girl
friend. He’d just moved into a house at
606 High Point and he decided to em
ploy flowers on his corner lot to let the
world know of his need for female com
panionship.
“I put a red begonia heart out there
and above the heart I put a sign that said
‘girlfriend wanted, ” he said.
It worked. People noticed.
Drivers blew horns and waved. Af
ter a while, someone stole Slater’s sign so
he put up another. Whoever it was kept
stealing the sign and he kept replacing
it. “I finally had to chain it to a tree,”
he said.
Potential girlfriends noticed, too. He
set up a “girlfriend wanted” website and,
at one point, was getting emailed by po
AROUND
TOWN
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PHOTOS BY JOE EARLE
Shep Slater planted pink begonias honoring
the fight against breast cancer.
tential girlfriends from all over.
A local TV station put him on its
evening news report. That led to reports
on other TV stations and radio stations
from across the country. “It just blew
way out of proportion,” he said.
They called from stations as far away
as Hawaii, he said. Some offered to
set him up on blind dates. He actually
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agreed to go on a blind date set up by
a radio station in Boise, Idaho, he said.
He had to pay for his own air fare. The
station paired him with
a woman who called
into a contest line to see
a George Strait concert
and they went togeth
er, even though “I hate
country,” he said.
“It was fun,” he said.
“They couldn’t have
been any nicer. Would
I do it again? Probably
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not.
His girlfriend hunts are behind him
now, but people remember. “I can still
walk out in my yard and people stop and
ask if I still need a girlfriend,” he said.
For the record, he doesn’t. He’s mar
ried. And he changes the symbol his
flower garden yields every six months or
so. Once, he planted the garden in the
shape of the number 26.2, the mileage
in a marathon, to honor his wife’s run
ning, he said.
Working with the corner flower gar
den inspired him. Now the rest of his lot
is covered with hydrangeas, flowers and
decorative trees. He’s built a pond that
One of Slater’s designs.
attracts frogs
and dragonflies
and other ani
mals. “It’s amaz
ing how much
wildlife you get
when you put
in a pond,” he
said. “Things
just show up on
their own.”
Slat
er worked for
a while as a
stand-up com
ic. He said he
traveled the
country playing clubs and telling jokes.
He at times appeared onstage dressed in
a shower curtain. But he didn’t feel com
fortable living on the road and felt he’d
never make enough money as a comic.
“That’s a hard life,” he said.
So he came home. Now he makes his
living, he said, doing the same job he
had when he was 10 years old. He mows
lawns. His calls his company “We Cut
Grass.”
“I used to do full-
scale landscape instal
lation,” he said, “but
now, since I work alone,
I just cut grass. ‘We
Cut Grass,’ that pret
ty much sums it up. If
I tell somebody that I
cut grass, they say, “Oh,
you’re in the landscap
ing business.’ If I tell
them I’m a landscaper, they say, ‘Oh,
you cut grass.’ ... It’s just me. I should
probably change [the company name] to
‘Me Cut Grass.’ But that would be bad
grammar, wouldn’t it?”
And when he’s not cutting grass, he
plants flowers. To make symbols.
And people still notice.
“It’s amazing how many people enjoy
it,” he said. “It brings so much pleasure
to me to get feedback from the people
that drive by and enjoy it. Some guy to
day said I was, in his mind, the blessing
of the neighborhood because he enjoys
looking at the flowers so much.”
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i/D
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12 | JUNE 14 —JUNE27, 2013 | www.ReporterNewspapers.net
