Friday, January 27, 2012

Moss Rose Collection Ordered

Today was very productive for me with more seed ordering accomplished and lots of odds and ends taken care of this morning. I'm pretty sure I'm done ordering all the seed varieties for our moss rose (Portulaca) collection. The moss rose (Portulaca grandiflora 'Fairytales Cinderella') above is one of the many vegetative varieties out on the market. I've included some of these in the collection but have currently focused primarily on seed varieties. I've found 67 varieties thus far and we'll probably add another 20 of the vegetative-type varieties as well. Some of my seed order today can be seen to the right. I also spent some time on our Home Garden Tour (July 21st, 2012) as preparations have to start early so we can get the details confirmed and tickets produced before Mother's Day. We have seven wonderful home gardens this year with the majority being in neighboring Milton, WI. I also worked on some presentations and finalized the listings for two more garden areas that are in need of our new woody plant labels. Luis will be in on Monday for data entry and production. The stacks of labels below are just some of what Gary and Luis have prepared. There are another 4,000 blank ones on the way! Marianne has been preparing the labels for these (double-sided industrial tape) but we also need to come up with a good system for creating concrete anchors for these (just the woodies). I've been thru too many gardens where labels have been pulled out, knocked over, moved or are missing. We'd like to really secure these out in the gardens and will come up with a plan of attack soon. Maury was in for a good portion of the day and started painting the first four of ten pvc pipe planters (see to the lower left). These four will be painted blue while the others will be either orange (3) or lime (3). These will be quite conspicuous out in the gardens and we're not shy about some vivid colors out there, whether with plants or other garden elements. Dr. Gredler was in all day continuing to paint obelisks. He came up with a nice way of putting on the second coat of lime on the 9' obelisks (see to the lower right). Doc then started converting some red obelisks to orange. He asked my why not paint them red again. My response, much to his chagrin, was "Red is so last year, orange is back in." Bev and Deb stopped by to talk about the leaf art project for 2012 and some Garden Festival (August 25) details. Next Wednesday, February 1st, interested artists/sponsors can pick up an oak leaf (primed plywood) cutout from the Parker Education Center for a $40 registration/materials fee. There will be only 40 pieces offered and they go fast! Details regarding this project can be found on our website (www.rotarybotanicalgardens.org). It will be nice to see the creative results displayed out in the gardens. Dave G. and Dean stopped by today and we also saw Bill O. briefly. Directly below are Tom and Nancy working on sorting/sifting/organizing the contents of our flat file system yesterday. We're really making sure our historical records, plans, etc. are organized and safe. I've even made multiple copies of all my photos, computer files and presentations from the past seven years or so. At the bottom is our weeping Jack pine (Pinus banksiana 'Uncle Fogy') specimen in front of the Parker Education Center. I think we'll move this specimen up higher so it can cascade down. The close proximity of this specimen to the curbline (bottom of photo) has caused some problems with "pruning by snow plow."

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