Busy gardeners amid early blooming crocus gave notice Friday in downtown Baldwin City that spring has nearly arrived.

For the first time this year, the Douglas County master gardeners who tend the Tom Swan Demonstration Garden on the northeast corner of Eighth and High streets were in the plot preparing for the season ahead. Observers will notice one change from last year: a 6-foot-high tree stump.

Jane Akob and Carol Anderson, who are the co-leaders of the garden effort, said they plan to demonstrate to Baldwin City residents how an eyesore stump on their properties could be creatively used.

“We’re going to have a fairy garden around there,” Akob said of the stump at the western entrance to the pocket garden. “There will be a path through there and maybe a little table and chairs. We’ll have a roof on the top of the stump. We just want to show people who have a stump in their yard, there’s another way to handle that rather than have it removed.”

Anderson said another demonstration tip was planned for the season.

“We plan to have a lot more shade cover this year,” she said. “Cover is better than mulch.”

It’s the fifth year the master gardeners have tended the demonstration plot immediately to the west of the Lumberyard Arts Center. The progress they’ve made at the park in the center of downtown is documented in a book that local artist, photographer and writer Melinda Hipple recently presented the group. It shows the transformation of the lot from a tended but neglected plot to a downtown showcase.

There will soon be a new showcase across Eighth Street from the garden. Renovations are now underway at the vacant storefront at 723 Eighth St. The building will house a new Edward Jones office.

Previously, Peter Carr said he expected to open his Edward Jones office in the building at the start of 2017. The delay is something that often happens with renovation projects, Carr said recently.

“We ran into some unforeseen things that pushed it back,” he said. “We’re doing some major renovation on the inside and the exterior as well. I think when it’s done, it will be a space that will wow people and that they will be proud to have on that corner.”

Last month, the Baldwin City Council approved the application of landlords Stan and Stacy Carrington for a $5,000 grant to make facade improvements to the building. It is the second grant awarded in recent years for such improvements to downtown storefronts through the city’s facade and mural grant program. The other project was last year’s facade restoration that Alan Wright made at 715 High St.

Carr said he would like to have a gallery in his office of historic photographs of downtown Baldwin City and would welcome talking with anyone who had photographs or prints to share with him.

The city of Eudora has installed about 80 to 85 percent of its new electrical meters, Eudora Public Works director Mike Hutto told the Eudora City Commission on Feb. 27. Once all the meters are installed this month, they will be synced on the same platform that houses the wireless water meters. Once that conversion is done, the city will be out of the door-to-door meter reading business.

Hutto said some Eudora homeowners were apparently ready to see the end of strangers walking near properties. One contracted meter installer was surprised last month at the sound of a shotgun being racked behind him as he was working on the property, Hutto said. Turning around, he indeed found a woman leveling a gun on him.

City employees finished installing the meter for the spooked contract worker, Hutto said. It remains a mystery just who the gun-toting woman was. It wasn’t anyone living at the home where the meter was being installed, Hutto said.

The Baldwin City Chamber of Commerce will meet from noon to 1 p.m. Wednesday at the Lumberyard Arts Center, 718 High St. The guest speaker will be LaVerne Epp, of the Bioscience and Technology Business Center at the University of Kansas. The Homestead Kitchen and Bakery will cater the lunch. Cost of the lunch is $7.