The Pile Diminishes

My pile of catalogs on the office table is getting smaller by the day! Or, maybe it just looks that way because I restack them and move them around on occasion. My seed orders are progressing well and I'm over 50% done I would estimate. I've ordered 200+ varieties of annuals thus far as well as most of our vegetable varieties for the spring plant sale. At some point, I'll select herb plants as part of our sale although we'll have our neat basils started by seed (20 or so varieties). The Janesville Area Herb Society has been a great help in recommending herbs for the sale and has also done an amazing job maintaining our herb garden (three sections) in the formal gardens since the beginning of the gardens. They have a motivated membership and have been supportive in many ways. To the above left is the 2010 catalog for Plant Delights Nursery, Inc. (www.plantdelights.com/). This catalog has an enormous assortment of all sorts of plants and the catalog itself is humorous and informative. We order from them every year and look forward to their new offerings annually. While we peruse mail-order catalogs of all sorts over the winter, we do obtain the vast majority of our plants locally and will always go to a local source first and foremost for a specific plant, tool, etc. Our local economy is so important to us but we certainly wont pass up the opportunity to try some new things from other venues. To the right is Bluestone Perennials (http://www.bluestoneperennials.com/) that has some nice plants as well. Remember though, go to you local garden centers first!!!


Small crew today with Larry, Bill, Little Jerry and Urban outside bringing in lights. Dr. Gredler worked on some obelisk staining and priming of those "plywood daisies". The weather was quite nice today actually. I had some afternoon appointments but am back for our monthly board meeting. Some of our best volunteers are also on our Board of Directors which is a very good thing as they can lend a day to day perspective. Maury, Dick H. and Mike M. stopped by today as well. My goal is to have my office table clear of catalogs by the end of the month. It has to be clear so we can lay out 1000+ seed packets and start organizing them by grower. Slow time? Below is 'Pussy Cat Pink' iris (Iris germanica), a dwarf bearded iris shot by Tim in 2009.