Flowers Sighted! (And A Butterfly...)

Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) above were spotted in the fern & moss garden today. I noticed a couple clumps starting to bloom although most of the early spring bulbs are just barely piercing the soil. This clump was near a nice south-facing rock so the added warmth has certainly help with the "prompting." This is pretty early for snowdrops but I'm sure not a world record for our area. I was able to make a quick tour after some morning meetings and was happy to see that the deer damage was moderate although we still have lots of clean-up to do as the gardens are sloppy after the snow thaws. The butterfly that was spotted was the first of our 34 plywood butterflies that was returned by the artist. We hope to have all of the completed butterflies returned by April 1st so they can be seal coated and then placed out in the gardens prior to Mother's Day. It will be exciting to see the wide range of artistic impressions and we believe this art display will be as popular as the daisies from last year.

We had a Garden Development Committee Meeting today (Carrie, Kelli, Iza, Maury, Joanne, Hal, Big John, Gary and me) and talked about many of our spring plans and future topics of interest out in the gardens. Larry and Bill headed out to take holiday lights off the building and Bill did a nice job tidying up the entrance garden paths that had lots of sand and debris. Larry went out pruning later and we had Dick W. here today cutting back more grasses. Urban was out pruning and Dr. Gredler came in for some more dump runs (see the bottom picture of his rig). Kay came in to work on labels and we also saw Vern, Marv, Marianne, Estee and many others today. On my tour I noticed additional stem interest on the coral bark willow (Salix alba 'Britzensis') that has greenish stems in summer that turn orange and even a deep crimson in the winter. We cut this specimen back severely on occasion as the newest growth has the most color. This is one of the most colorful woody plants in the gardens right now but those stems will "green up" soon enough!