A Good Office Day

Lots of work was accomplished in the office today as well as outside in the gardens. Above is Janice working on seeds and labels for the spring plant sale. She does a great job coordinating the production of over 20,000 labels, informational signs, etc. for the sale. Many of the seeds seen in the foreground were addressed by Marianne and me this morning as we did a last inventory prior to my "seed deliveries" tomorrow morning. Janice and Big John are giving their talk on The Right Tool for the Right Job this evening. Many of our volunteers plan on going and we hope to have good attendance from the general populace as well. Janice and John are organized and ready to rock and roll. Jenny (seen to the left) was here to start printing off labels for some of our annuals (our old-fashioned sticker labels) and is sinking her teeth in to entering data for our new laser engraver. Her priorities include the daylily collection (300+ signs) and the fern collection (200+ signs). Our intent with the new engraver is to do larger collections first although we'll create the new labels for incoming perennials this year as well. Luis' inventory of woody plants will dictate some of those label priorities as well. Little Jerry (to the right) also stopped by and brought Max as well. We hope to see Jerry often as a volunteer and will continue to rely on his expertise in pruning, tool sharpening and donut consumption.

Larry, Marv and Terry jumped right in to removing trees out in the arboretum. We have some larger, disfigured spruce (Picea) that have become overgrown and they made quick work of that project and came back covered in sawdust and smelling like Christmas. If I could go back in time 22 years, I would talk to the volunteers planting some of these evergreens and say "Hey, don't put them too close or they'll get so crowded that someone will be cutting them down in 22 years!" Below is a close-up of decay fungi on the dead branch of a mountain ash (Sorbus) that I thought looked cool. The tree will be fine but this branch will go obviously. Dick W. and Ron W. went out to work on more ornamental grass cutting and hauling while Dr. Gredler made two trips to the dump today in an effort to take a dent out of our growing piles of debris. He'll continue his trips tomorrow. Urban was out doing more pruning and Pat went out to help after finishing some painting inside. Maury was back from AZ and became an immediate help for everyone. Dave, Jim, Vern and Bob worked on various projects including cutting cedar boards to size for some of our future benches. These guys are very handy and one of their Monday projects includes removing some of the fence panels near our Japanese garden waterfall so some trees can be removed and access is ready for dismantling that water feature. The gardens will be a mess this spring but that's the way the cookie crumbles. We also saw Mary Kay, Bev, Gary, Big John, Neil, Bill and others today. The bottom photo shows our assortment of garden structures ready to go. Note the blue pyramids on the left and their odd slant (totally intentional...see where they are placed this spring!).