Another Great Workday!

We had another great workday today with over 27 volunteers helping out along with the grounds crew of Janice, Marianne, Big John, Marv, Larry and myself. All the images here are from the workday with the exception of the shot to the lower left of the fruits of the native cranberrybush viburnum (Viburnum trilobum) which I thought looked neat will look increasingly delictable to birds later in the winter. We had the perfect amount of volunteers today and had 20 volunteers in the horticulture center, guided by Marianne and Janice, processing the irises to the final stage (to the right) prior to the sale next Saturday (August 28th, 10am-4pm). That day is also the 5th Annual Garden Festival (see our website for more info). The remainder of our volunteers went out and raked/collected leaves and debris from the gardens after the short but powerful storm last night. Larry, Bill and Big John got all three wedding sites tidied up and ready to go. Dr. Gredler was out mowing and Dr. Yahr was around as well. Below are Marv and Bob D. fighting over some containers. I appreciate their enthusiasm but wish they would have shared instead of this embarassing display. Actually, they had to separate 400+ containers that were nestled snuggly together.
Maury and Big John brought all the bearded irises (Iris germanica) this past Thursday from Dan's warehouse in Beloit, WI (thanks Dan!) and they were in good shape. Stored in over 400 boxes (see to the left) since July 10th, these rhizomes were processed by our crack team in only three hours. We had to cut the irises back again and put them in labeled bags and finally in to their sale container complete with picture (for almost all varieties). Mary brought four female RECAPPERS and they were a huge help (picture further below). I was pleased with how smoothly everything ran and special thanks to Marianne and Janice who are so good with keep everything on task. Bev and her helper were ready with the labels and all steps of our process went quite nicely. More pictures below...