What Day Is It Anyway?

With the 4th of July tomorrow, the Friday grounds staff (Marv, Marianne and Terry) shifted to help prepare the gardens for the weekend. Normally this is done on Friday but we did our Friday routine (mowing, wedding site prep, planting, watering, etc.) today. Marv and I went over to Song Sparrow Nursery (Avalon, WI) to pick up some plants and were treated to an impromptu tour by Renee, the nursery manager. She has a true passion for plants and runs a tight ship. I HIGHLY encourage everyone to get copies of the Song Sparrow catalog (mail order) which is one of the nicest catalogs around (layout, pictures, plant descriptions and of course, offerings...). The Grumpies were active with various projects and we were able to do quite a bit of planting. I went around with RoundUp and hit some of our worst areas for weeds. The bummer today was noticing that someone has moved a bunch of labels around one of our gardens (intentionally), thereby screwing up our interpretation and creating more work for us. In addition, I found a clump of annuals that had been pulled out of the ground and tossed behind some shrubs. It's not worth trying to figure out the motivations of those that abuse the gardens. I just hope they've graduated on to mailbox baseball, ding door ditch and burning bags of dog poop as they all fall in line with such juvenille activities (not necessarily done by teenagers though...).

The shrub at the top is the native, American elderberry (Sambucus canadensis) that you may notice blooming along roadsides, waterways and other locations that tend to be on the damp side. This shrub can't be missed as it has huge, white flower "domes" that later turn to dark maroon berries. The leaves, stems, roots and unripe fruits are mildly poisonous. Cooked berries are used in juices, wines and other recipes. The picture above was taken along the Milton, WI section of the Ice Age trail. However, we have six or so nice specimens along our pond. This shrub does sucker and spread. Many of the European species have neat cultivars with colorful leaves. Elderberries do prefer adequate moisture.

'Karl Foerster' feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster') is in "bloom" below. The inflourescences have a pinkish tinge initially, then turn amber color. This cool season grass achieves full height by early July and this grass is one of my favorites for mass planting and its narrow, upright form. Look for 'Avalanche', 'Overdam' and 'El Dorado' if you like a little variegation with your feather reed grass.