Yesterday (Sunday) saw some awesome hoarfrost formation around town. The shot above was taken in Madison and shows bur oaks (Quercus macrocarpa) coated perfectly. I
t was an amazing landscape although it has all been melted off since then of course. The image to the left is of my contorted white pine (Pinus strobus 'Contorta') at home. You didn't have to wander far to get a nice picture. To the right is the fruiting structure of the staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina). We had a great crew today. Marianne ca
me in to work on her iris project and some other duties while Janice came is as well. Urban, Dick W., Marv, Terry, Little Jerry and Larry were out bringing in lights from the gardens. We are making lots of progress with taking down the Holiday Lights Show and will able to get back at some winter pruning in short order. It is an art form trying to organize and put away the lights in a logical fashion. The carpenters continued with their "plywood daisy" creation while Del continued on his reindeer project. Maury, Dick P. and Big John worked on replacing light bulbs/tubes at the other building and later were out figuring out where we'll extend our new fencing this year. Dr. Gredler worked on sealing pieces of future obelisks and will not run out of work any time soon. We also saw Dick H., Ed and Jumbo Jim over here too. I've been ordering seeds for our cucumber collection and am excited to have Kelley, a master gardener, helping with much of the research. We will be displaying 20 heirloom varieties and will offer these as seed packets at our spring plant sale in May. I just read yesterday that Chinese scientists have completely mapped the cucumber genome, making it the 7th plant that has been totally "mapped". This should help with cucumber breeding and I'm guessing is quite an intense process. I did some cucumber research on my own and was interested to find out the following factoids...
*Cucumbers were thought to originate over 10,000 years ago in southern Asia and evidence exists regarding serious cultivation of cucumbers over the past 3,000 years
*Cucumbers are around 95% water
*"Cool as a cucumber" is a term we've all heard regarding being calm. However, the inside of a cucumber can be up to 20 degrees F cooler than surrounding air temperatures
*Cucumbers contain potassium, vitamin A, vitamin E, calcium, phosphorous, niacin, vitamin C, and many other nutrients. They also are a good source of fiber
*more factoids to follow in the future... 
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