The Man, The Myth, The Legend

Tomorrow, Dr. Robert Yahr will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from Forward Janesville. This is certainly an honor and while I know he's nervous about his acceptance speech, I'm sure he wont pass up the opportunity to stress the importance of supporting RBG to a VIP audience. It truly is amazing how the gardens have developed in 21 years from the initial ideas of Dr. Yahr. He remains a driving force and lends so much momentum to keeping the gardens looking good and progressively developing. Of course his lifetime achievements included U.S. Naval service and improving countless smiles as a dentist and orthodontist. Kudos to the founder of Rotary Botanical Gardens. Below is a nice photo from Tim of Dr. Yahr in action last year.

Another small but productive crowd over here today. Dr. Gredler continued with his obelisk painting and is probably tired of red paint. The good news (or bad news for him) is that I have five more "conversion colors" selected for other obelisks. Little Jerry came in to work on some indoor lights show work while Dick W. was here this afternoon helping cut reindeer antlers for Del's cutouts. Vern was here working on designing a neat new arbor sitting area that we'll install this year near the children's garden and Maury was in briefly as well. I ordered more seeds and should be done by Friday. I'm starting to move to plant orders and need to confirm herb selections for our spring plant sale (May 14-16).

So many of my orders coming in now are filled with the styrofoam peanuts which drives me crazy for many reasons (see earlier blog on stryofoam). There are biodegradable peanuts as well but I am also not a big fan of the "packing air bags". I was tickled to see Territorial Seeds sent a box with BIODEGRADABLE air cushions for packing. I found they are made by FP International (www.fpintl.com/) and as their website states, I hope they are "the future of packaging" with these earth-wise options. See picture to the left. Incidentally, that same box contained some CowPots (www.cowpots.com/) which will be part of our earth-friendly container display this spring. They've been around for a couple years but I've heard nothing but good things about them. See this NY Times article www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/nyregion/connecticut/0301colct.html for some other facts. They are made with 100% renewable, composted cow manure. They break down quickly and enrich the soil, so they are very handy for direct planting out in the gardens (see picture to the right). The website has an interesting section on company history and I hope this product really catches momentum. There is no doubt that this resource is "renewable" with 98 million cows/cattle in the United States each pooping 120 lbs. of manure per day....There are some other exciting developments in utilizing manure as an energy source. See Dr. Yahr below not only leaning on a shovel but a post hole digger as well!