Preface To A Nice Weekend

Lots of color out in the gardens today. We started with an overcast day but it is bright and sunny now. Spring colors are so vibrant as evidenced above with pink hyacinths (Hyacinthus) and grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum) planted together last fall for this "bouquet effect" (nice shot by Sue S.). Warm temperatures over the past couple of weeks have encouraged blooms a bit earlier than usual but our tulip displays should hold for the busy Mother's Day weekend (see to the left). We get hundreds of visitors if the weather is nice and it does look favorable although a bit on the cool side.

Great day today with Margaret and Kay working together and taking care of some serious weeds. I was able to spray herbicide in some of our really bad areas but we're doing pretty good with weeds (until our cottonwoods seed themselves everywhere in the next month or so). Marv and Terry hung all our hanging baskets which took some time as we have to bend down their hooks so people can't walk away with them. Surprisingly enough, we've had planted containers and hanging baskets "walk away" from here. Unbelievable. Marv and Terry also planted some trees and did various tasks in preparation for our big spring weekend. Marianne did a great job on tidying, preparing the cutting display, planting hostas and also transplanting pachysandra in the Japanese garden to replace those patches that we lost in the floods of '08. Dr. Gredler did a lot of mowing and we also saw Maury, Bob T. and some other volunteers. Luis O. came in and we're trying to finish up some labeling and relabeling in the sunken garden. Our GIT team (Garden Interpretation Team) has done a great job out there and we've alreay replaced over 1000 labels with many more to come. This was long overdue and the gardens look so much better for these improvements. Nice shot of 'Red Peacock' crabapple (Malus) to the right. I love the "bicolor" look of the blossoms with the darker unopened blooms augmenting the lighter pink blooms that are fully open. Very nice! Hopefully our compost sale will do well tomorrow and our plant sale the following weekend. Nice shot below of the fragrant, early blossoms of Beaver Creek fothergilla (Fothergilla gardenii 'KLMtwo'). Also called witchalder, this small shrub also has a wonderful fall color and can take some shade.