Working Thru The Drizzle

Today is our first Saturday workday of the year and unfortunately it has been overcast and drizzling at times. Only the hardy souls showed up today. Above, from left to right, are John, Gene and Ernie working on processing 700 daylilies that were "healed in" our vegetable beds last fall. This was a neat donation that was inventoried by Lisa last year and the plan today was to lift, clean and sort these by variety. Marv and Margaret came later to help the guys, while Janice and Sue organized them after they were hauled over to our holding yard. These five volunteers, with Janice in charge, did a great job on this project. We thought to stay close to the Horticulture Center with potential rains and this project is also timely as we need to prepare this space for heirloom cucumbers and gourds. Our compost sale continued today with our volunteers, Heidi and Alice accomodating the sale after Marianne got everything set-up (she later worked on labels). Bill was also here collecting garbage, tidying up and he planted a small Japanese maple (Acer palmatum 'Crimson Queen') in the Japanese garden. Dr. Gredler worked on some lawn repair this morning. Larry worked on various projects and helped deal with a large tree and shrub delivery. We also saw Art and Polly over here today. Deb and I gave a tour for our Sunday watering volunteers (Sandy, Bob, Carolyn, Suzy and Gene) which is much appreciated task.

It was too cold to take out our tropicals (to the above left) today but we'll get them outside next week. I've shown some neat magnolias in the blog over the past couple of weeks and caught a glimpse of the blooms of one of our new ones (not yet planted) called 'Blue Opal' (right). This is a variety of the cucumbertree magnolia (Magnolia acuminata) and only has the blue "sheen" as the buds open and then go to the standard yellow. This is a neat feature and very unique to this variety apparently. Below are some additional interesting plants out in the gardens that I photographed yesterday. Directly below is the fresh foliage of the Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum var. pictum) that is such a tough, durable fern and certainly strays away from the standard green ferns (which also have textural merit of course!). Next in line is the vivid foliage of the variegated five-leaf aralia (Eleutherococcus sieboldianus 'Variegatus') which is one of the toughest shrubs for dry shade (or sun for that matter). While it is hard to find and relatively slow growing, scroll further down to see an informal hedge of these showy, arching, foliage-interest shrubs. The deer avoid them as they have significant thorns on them as well and the growth rate increases with better soil. Highly recommended for their durability. At the bottom is a nice shot of our southern, Japanese garden entrance. There is still plenty of spring color out in the gardens and more opening each day. Lots on our plate next week...