April Showers Welcome

I was off most of today but did pop in this morning for a couple of hours. The top picture above is the stump of an ailing redbud (Cercis canadensis) that we had to remove near the Japanese garden. Last year an overzealous rental company decided to back up a truck down the narrow path near this tree and clipped off a good portion of this tree which we later found to have lots of rot. Oh well. I did count the rings at it looked to be about 20 years old and was about 15' tall. The other shot is of emerging primrose (Primula sp.) down near the zig-zag bridge that is teasing its way out of the soil. Below is another hellebore (Helleborus purpureus) coming out with some early blooms that unfortunately are hard to see as they are dark and lost down low with the surrounding dark soil. Pretty though (located in the purple color room garden). This morning we had a nice productive meeting of our Home Garden Tour Committee (Tim, Bill, Barb, Cora, Jean and Janet). I also saw Mary W., Dr. Gredler, Marv and Marianne. I also popped by the main building to take shots of more of the cool butterfly art projects that are coming in daily (I'll feature some of these recent submissions in a blog this weekend). Although the Home Garden Tour event is four months away (July 23rd, 10 am - 4 pm, rain or shine), we have a progression of events that includes soliciting our sponsors and producing an event booklet/ticket that we hope will be available by Mother's Day. Last year we had over 600 attendees enjoy this event. This year is our 17th annual Home Garden Tour and we have another nice line-up of seven home gardens and the eight site to visit is RBG which should be peaking with summer color. This event is a nice fundraiser but involves lots of planning as well as volunteer assistance on the day of the event. Tickets ($10 in advance, $12 day of the event, children 12 and under free) will be available and K&W Greenery (one of our kind sponsors of this event) and RBG. Other primary sponsors include DWG Landscaping, Wirkus Nurseries (Clinton, WI), Evergreen Irrigation, Petranek Bros. Landscaping and Sullivan Signs. To the left is our double dolphin wall fountain in the English cottage garden. We'll get most of our water features going in April and it was nice to see continued work today on the arduous cleaning of the koi pond. To the right is the already emerging (and quite frost resistant) foliage of the monkshood (Aconitum sp.) in the gazebo garden. I'm always amazed at how early it comes up and has a nice pinkish tinge. This is one of the later blooming species that has flowers in October. Below is our potting soil which will be utilized for myriad projects. We'll, of course, use this in our containers which Marv and Terry will place out in the gardens next week. We'll also use it for our "plant your own container" option at the spring plant sale and for our May 18th "Container Planting Workshop". Check out the website for more details. Tomorrow I speak at UW-Fond Du Lac for the annual DIG (Day in the Garden) symposium. I'll talk about "Edible Landscaping" and have presented at this event in the past. I really like the UW-Fond Du Lac campus and my older daughter was a student here a couple years ago. This event is a fundraiser organized by the Fond Du Lac County master gardeners with proceeds benefiting county projects, youth education and college scholarships. Looking forward to it. I'm also looking forward to more rain over the next couple of days to give spring a good jump start. The bottom shot is of our soon to be assembled cedar benches that the guys (Dave, Jim, Vern and Bob) have been working on recently.