Perfect Weather (No Sarcasm)

It really was a nice day with afternoon temperatures in the 70s. The mornings have been a bit cool but not overly so. The plant sale was a bit more active today and I'm sure we did better than our "soggy Monday." We're making all efforts to promote the sale this week and are looking forward to clearing more plants out. Larry helped Rick and Tony get set up to pressure-wash our brick paths in the sunken garden. We had some flooding this spring in that garden and the bricks, many of which have lettering on them, were getting harder to read due to dust and debris. The fellas did a nice job and Greg came later to help them re-gravel a path. Jerry kept busy with pruning and hauling piles of debris. Marianne ran the plant sale but was able to sneak away and continue labeling and mapping our expanding iris collection. Janice worked on labels, rose assessments, moss clean-up (with a volunteer) and other duties around the gardens. Kay sunk her teeth in to the woodland walk with weeding and leaf clean-up. We have to perpetually remove leaves in phases (mainly cottonwoods) because of the sheer volume that would accumulate if we waited until the end of the season. Many of these leaves go in to Marv's growing compost pile at the Horticulture Center.
The image to the left is one of my favorite coleus' (Solenstemon scutellarioides) called 'Freckles'. The swirl of orange and yellow is showy and this coleus is used often throughout our orange and blue theme this year. Note the bluish grass poking thru the gaps. This is the non-hardy love grass (Eragrostis elliottii 'Wind Dancer') that achieves heights around 5' tall and appears quite wispy. See a full sized specimen in the other picture to the right. We used lots of this grass this year but I think it became floppy in some instances because of the volume of precipitation. Annual seasonal grasses can be great role players in the garden and are wonderful components for texture and color in the container as well as the garden bed. One of my other favorite annual grasses can be seen below. This is feathertop grass (Pennisetum villosum) that goes from a little green clump in spring to this gorgeous plant with billowing inflorescences (flower and seed head) in a creamy white. This grass becomes an important component in August when it begins to bloom