Chilly & Productive

We had some great help today during our overcast and chilly day. It never really rained but there always seemed to be a light mist coming down. Above are Amy (mom) with her twins, Owen and Emily, planting in the English cottage garden. Here they are planting 'Merlin Blue Morn' petunias (Petunia). This team did a nice job and both Janice and Jenny helped them finish planting many annuals in that garden space. It didn't take much training for the kids to understand the nuances of planting and they both did a fine job and should be future gardeners (I hope!). Amy is part of a MOMS group that had scheduled this planting morning but the potential rain apparently kept everyone else away! Directly below is the 'Mystic Haze' dahlia (Dahlia) with showy blooms over maroon foliage. This selection is planted throughout the terrace garden which also features our orange theme for this year. The next photo down is an Oriental poppy (Papaver orientale) in the English cottage garden. The third photo down features the native, yellow wild indigo (Baptisia sphaerocarpa) peaking nicely out in the gardens in many locations. Those are some luminescent yellow flower spikes.

We had some great volunteer assistance today and the chance of rain didn't scare away our most stalwart of volunteers. Aside from Amy, Owen and Emily above, we had Marleen and Magda (seen above, Marleen in yellow) working in their garden space. The ladies did a nice job weeding, purging overgrown perennials and planting lots of annuals. Note how Marleen's shirt matches the 'Globemaster' ornamental onions (Allium) in the foreground! We had some Grumpy help too out in the gardens include Bob C. (seen below) who worked with Gene composting a corner of the sunken garden. The guys also did some weeding in that location. Dick P. and Maury helped get our major water line up and running this morning with some help from Dick H. and new Ron. Dick H. also made some dump runs and has spent the day working on the tail lights on our dump truck. Dave T., Vern, Jim and Ron Y. finished work on a nice planter for the Garden Gala (Dinner Dance) in July. The guys have plenty of looming projects as well. Bill O. came in for mowing this afternoon and Dr. Gredler took care of most of his mowing this morning. The second photo down shows three of our four Grumpettes that worked in the sunken garden today. It's tough to see faces but, from left to right, are Mary R. (in green), Marilyn and Winifred in the distance. Suzy is just off camera. The ladies weeded, cut back bulb foliage and planted over 500 annuals this morning. They did a super job. Gary finished some vital computer repairs and was in this afternoon fine tuning our laser engraving process prior to getting back in to action with the backlog of labels yet to be made. I was pulled in some different directions today so probably missed some of our volunteer arrivals. We also saw Dr. Yahr, Amy H. and many others.

The grounds staff had a busy day with no shortage of projects. We had about .25" of rain last night which was welcome but not as much volume as I would have liked. It saved us quite a bit of watering today but with the repair of our water line, Larry (seen above) ran irrigation in select areas. He also did quite a bit of tree trimming and focused on low hanging branches on four good-sized trees. He also push mowed and worked on other projects as well. Big John and Jeremy were attached at the hip today and did a dynamite job planting twenty four boxwoods (Buxus hybrida 'Green Velvet') in one of the parking lot islands after clearing the daffodil (Narcissus) foliage. The guys also dug out some cruddy looking yews (Taxus) that the deer had nibbled down to nothing. They also filled some of our raised planters and planted at the end of the day. Jenny worked on labels, planted, weeded, tidied and kept busy in many areas today. Janice worked on myriad projects including weeding, cutting back bulb foliage, spreading our slug bait/repellent, etc. She also had a meeting and helped our volunteers seen in the top photo. Cheryl was in for a half day and did a very thorough job of clearing weeds and preparing the garden space that will become our "Giant Garden" full of tropicals. She has a keen eye for detail which is much appreciated. I placed many of the plants this afternoon for planting and had a wide range of tasks today as well. The photos below show some more features out in the gardens today.