The Cotton Doth Commeth

This time of year is interesting out in the gardens as the cottonwoods (Populus deltoides) disperse their seeds and you can see how they get their common name. It looks like snow falling down over the entire garden. Unfortunately, these seeds will germinate in all of our open soil in the coming weeks and I just read that a mature cottonwood can disperse 48 million seeds! We have around 40 good sized cottonwoods on our property and while it always gets messy during the "cotton stage" (mid June thru early July), the cotton disappears although we are left to deal with culling out the seedlings around the gardens. We've had a lot of planting progress over the past five days. See below for the Bower City Garden Club planting last Thursday, our Sunday planters (due to rain on Saturday) and some planters from today. We're still doing well with planting our annuals and should be done by the end of the month.
Another great Grumpy day today with a bunch of guys (Ron, Rollie, Bill, Del and Charlie) planting trees with Larry. Bob T. did his air edging while Dick P. and Dick H. placed some posts for a new access gate at the Horticulture Center. The carpenters (Dave, Jim, Bob A. and Vern) worked on repairing the arched bridge as Terry T. scraped that same bridge in preparation for painting. Maury did some "high risk" painting (see below) and we even had some planting help later from the fellas.

Urban, Rose and their grandson Matthew planted along with Art (seen above and Mary. Janet is planting this afternoon and is taking over where everyone else left off. Marianne tidied, watered and planted a good portion of our ornamental edible collection with Shirley. Marv and Terry prepped the beds around the gazebo and planted hundreds of impatiens before moving on to other tasks. Little Jerry worked on "downsizing" some shrubs for me near the visitors center while I bounced between projects. Looks like rain is looming most of the week. Hopefully we'll get "planting pockets" between the showers. Below are the blooms of the Japanese tree lilac (Syringa reticulata). These bloom a couple weeks later than the French lilacs (Syringa vulgaris). The specimen below is actually a variegated variety ('Golden Eclipse') that has a very subtle creamy leaf variegation that fades to green by mid-summer. Still a nice tree though...The bottom image is a view thru goatsbeard (Aruncus dioicus) to our observation pier.