A Visit From Mr. Moss

I had another short day at RBG and was only there this morning. Larry went out to mark our irrigation heads with flags prior to Dr. Gredler continuing his aeration routine. Our lawns are growing fast and we're working on them like it's early May with twice weekly mowing and aeration (fertilizer in a couple weeks too). Dr. Gredler does a nice job out there and Larry and Bill did another round of pushmowing today. Janice headed out to do some weeding and also applied our slug treatment around all the hostas. Jenny also did some "focus weeding" in some of our hot spots. Some of our earliest weeds, that germinated over a month ago, are already blooming and going to seed. It is a vital project now to tackle these before we have more of a headache later this year. Kay headed out for some weeding and clean-up and I also saw Maury before I had to leave.

Most of the mossy images here are not from RBG but from the garden of Dale S. ("Mr. Moss"). Dale (from Waukesha) visited the garden yesterday morning with Dayle H. (from Madison) and they met with both Marv and Janice regarding our moss island in the fern & moss garden. The three photos above show Janice and Dale, Dale working on the moss island and Dayle directly above (respectively). They came ready to work as we asked Dale to work some of his "moss kung fu" on our island as we've admired his mosses (for obvious reasons seen here!) when we've visited his garden twice in the past. Both Dale and Dayle are VERY knowledgeable about mosses and we appreciate their assistance with this notable and continuing improvement.

Our fern & moss garden was built over eight years ago and continues to be one of our more popular gardens. The moss island was an original feature of this space and was planted by Janice and Jenny with moss patches found on site. Unfortunately the moss quality has fluctuated as a result of inconsistent irrigation with municipal water and an unfortunate flooding back in 2008 that did significant damage throughout the garden. Janice has taken this garden under her wing though over these years and done a very nice job. Marv has been involved more recently with adding mosses, rocks, clubmosses, etc. and we're hoping Dale can install the finishing touches.

Lots going on tomorrow and I can't wait to get "reconnected" with the gardens as I haven't done a walk thru since last Friday. My talk on Annual Grasses tonight at Olbrich Botanical Gardens (Madison) went well and I was able to tour the gardens prior to my presentation and caught some awesome shots that I'll share tomorrow. Enjoy the shots of Dale's mossy garden although his 1 acre garden includes much more.