A Hint Of Fall This Morning

Today was a wonderful day with lots of activity around the gardens. The plant sale continued and saw plenty of traffic throughout the day. Marianne got the sale up and running and left it in my semi-capable hands. We're still hoping for a dynamite weekend of sales and the weather looks like it will cooperate. Nice shot to the left of feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Avalanche') with golden silver lace vine (Fallopia aubertii 'Lemon Lace') working its way thru the grass. I love this time of year when the mornings are cool (chilly today) and the afternoons are in the 70s. That fall shift can be seen to the right as well with rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium) starting to dry up but still offering intrest and structure in our prairie. As the prairie heads in to October, we have local prairie clubs and enthusiasts collect seed and distribute collected seed to new naturalizing projects and prairie restorations in the area. We have so many wonderful relationships with various plant organizations and I was fortunate to do a presentation for the Wisconsin Hosta Society last night at Olbrich Botanical Gardens and thanked them for their financial support as well as many wonderful donations over the years. Below is a shot from yesterday. These are some of the ladies from Coldwell Banker that were helping organize daylilies as part of the United Way Celebration of Caring. The gang did a great job and "heeled in" over 400 plants. The Grumpies finished the rest today.
We had another nice Grumpy day with Ron and Gary watering, Del, Charlie and Ed cleaning up garden areas and John, Rollie and Dick H. finishing the daylily project described above. Dr. Yahr coordinated lots of work down in the wishing well garden and many Grumpies went over to help after break. We had Suzy, Suzanne, Glenna and Marilyn working as our talented weeding "quartet" in one of our most visible annual beds. They cleaned it up well and it should go the distance until hard frost at this point. Janice worked on all sorts of projects including watering and faciliating another nice group of volunteers from the local high school (see below) that worked on cleaning up the asters in the plant sale. Larry ran irrigation all day and had many duties that came up throughout the day. Little Jerry worked in the Japanese garden again today and that space is looking quite nice. Jumbo Jim was here with four RECAPPERS and they worked in the Japanese and alpine gardens. We had great plant sale volunteers as usual and continue to appreciate the role that volunteers play in making Rotary Botanical Gardens a wonderful resource for the community. The bottom image is of false aster or boltonia (Boltonia asteroides 'Snowbank') in our English cottage garden that blooms late in the season (now) and offers a nice airy effect (at 48" in height!). This perennial will take up some space, particularly in damper soils so consider frequent division and staking as needed.