Singing In The Rain!...Not Really.

Today has been cold and gloomy. We've had a steady light rain thru most of the day with cold winds. The moisture is ok but I'm looking forward to the warm up later in the week. The weeds should really get going then! Small crew today with Larry working on equipment and Janice potting up some new plants. Urban and Rose came in to paint our last 10 obelisks (deep blue) and Maury and Glenn also popped in. I gave another talk here at the gardens to a women's service club regarding "Container Gardening". Too bad they don't have a nice day to tour the gardens.

The logo to the left for American Garden Award represents an exciting new program that Rotary Gardens will be involved in this year. Only seventeen gardens in the country have been asked to participate in displaying select plants for the visiting public to vote on in terms of their favorites. This is the first flower evaluation program using cell phone voting technology. See http://www.americangardenaward.org/ for more information regarding this inaugural program. The plants are already here being nurtured and will be planted in their own garden location with appropriate signage. Nice shot of tulips in front of our building. They look beautiful although they were supposed to be pink!!! Not sure if I made the mistake or they weren't identified correctly. Regardless, we have a lot of orange/salmon tulips (1,000) blooming in front of our visitors center. Why sweat the small stuff? (but they should have been pink!). At the bottom is a close-up of the Grecian windflower (Anemone blanda) or thimbleweed. This fall-planted bulb (tuber) blooms in mid-April with low ferny foliage and large, 2-3" blossoms. Carrol took the picture below and we also have plenty of blue ones out there as well (see far bottom). They have perennialized well here and go dormant and disappear in the coming month or so. Lots of color out there in the gardens.