A Good Day For Soup

When I drove in this morning, it was already 48 degrees F. This is t-shirt weather in Wisconsin and certainly not consistent with what I'd like to see in February! Our nice blanket of snow is fast disappearing. It was overcast and drizzly most of the day which didn't stop progress around the gardens and Horticulture Center. It will be a nice night for our volunteer soup event tonight and it sounds like we'll have another great turnout (70+). Above are our Thursday afternoon volunteers working with Janice as they prepare the seed packets for our squash collection which will be offered at our spring plant sale in May. The easy part (for me) is ordering the seed. Janice then takes care of getting the packets and labels ready and coordinating the final packet processing. The group above did a nice job as usual and we look forward to their continued assitance with our spring preparations.

With the unseasonable weather, many Grumpies were able to get outside and bring in more obelisks (seen above), displays, cords, etc. I haven't been in the gardens since December and need to get out there soon. The obelisks above will receive a new color next week and we'll continue to get out in the garden as the weather allows. Terry, Marv, Larry, Pat, Bill and Dick H. all went out in the gardens to take advantage of the thaw. The carpenters (Dave, Jim, Bob and Vern) started work on six new cedar benches that will go out on the new North Point garden. Marianne continued work on organizing/purging our old photos and processed some surveys for me. Janice was here to work on her projects, with her groups and with our new volunteer, Cindi. We also saw Jim, Deb, Gary, Ron W., Del and many others over here today as well.

Hopefully by the end of the month, we'll have our six workshops for 2011 finalized and promoted. The image below is a silk scarf that represents a neat opportunity to dye garden silks with Shelley Ryan (July 30) as part of her "Scarves To Dye For" program. Shelley, host of Wisconsin Public Television's The Wisconsin Gardener, will guide participants thru an easy technique for dyeing scarves with natural materials. Ultimately, each participant will end up with four scarves. More details to follow. Keep an eye out for our other workshops that will include container gardening, rose care, pruning and creating your own stained glass, mosaic birdhouse.....Lots of fun things happening this year. Don't forget to sign up for the March 26 symposium (see our website) as it is filling very quickly.