Here And Gone

You wont see columbine (Aquilegia) like that above for another eight weeks or so but it sure is an exquisite bloom. I'm here briefly then gone to Chicago for the day. Good turnout of volunteers this morning. Marianne is back from her train trip and is helping process handouts and will begin the arduous task of going thru old records, photos, slides, newspaper clippings, etc. Our hope is to really sift and save the most relevant historical information from the past 20 years of our history. Marv, Dick W. and Dick H. are out hauling in displays and Urban M. is back from CA to do some more pruning. Now that Little Jerry is out with a broken arm, we'll need to rely more on volunteers for the last of our "winter" pruning. The carpenters are all here and it looks like everything is going well. Larry's back but at 50% after being sick for two days. Looks to be a nice day outside as well. Don't forget the importance of foliage color and texture in your shadier garden spaces. See the image below, taken at The Flower Factory nursery in Stoughton.
I would encourage everyone to look in to the definition and relevance of the term "carbon footprint". We all have an impact on the environment and the importance of minimizing negative impacts is vital. See www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/carboncalculator/ for an interesting way to compute your personal impact on the earth. Equally important is the ecological footprint that we collectively have on this planet. The definition of ecological footprint as plagarized from Wikipedia is "The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystems. It compares human demand with planet Earth's ecological capacity to regenerate. It represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area needed to regenerate the resources a human population consumes and to absorb and render harmless the corresponding waste. Using this assessment, it is possible to estimate how much of the Earth (or how many planet Earths) it would take to support humanity if everybody lived a given lifestyle." The disconcerting fact is that the total of humanity's ecological footprint on this planet (in 2005) is "1.3 earths". This means that we are collectively using natural resources 1.3 times faster than the earth can renew them. I wonder when that number will hit 2 and what percentage of this footprint is contributed by Americans? Food for thought! See our daylily (Hemerocallis) collection below. We'll be selling divisions of all 300 varieties in this collection on May 15,16,17!