Sweet Rain

"Into each life some rain must fall." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. That is also the title of a 1944 song performed by the Ink Spots with Ella Fitzgerald. We're happy for the rain which started last night and came down all morning. We've needed this for awhile and will take what we can get. It looks like a chance of rain over the next couple of days although I'd like a "precipitation break" between 10 am and 4 pm tomorrow during our Home Garden Tour (get your tickets at RBG or K&W Greenery!). The sign above is one of many that we'll place out tomorrow to get event attendees to the various home gardens. In the 18 years of this event, we have only had rain once and it was at the very end of the event. We'll hope for favorable weather but it is a "rain or shine" event. The top picture is our parking lot at the Horticulture Center with the rain pounding down.

To the left is Ariel peeling old labels that we'll re-use in the future. It was a good morning for indoor projects. Marv and Terry worked on cleaning, fueling and maintaining the vehicles and tidying up in the Horticulture Center while Marianne did a nice job putting stuff away as it was a jumbled mess out in the Horticulture Center of odds and ends. Janice was also in for myriad projects. We rely on rainy days to catch up on this type of work and have gone a long time since doing it last. Bill O. was in and helped clean vehicles and tidy up the carpentry area. We also saw Julie G. I am typing this blog at 9 am this morning as I'll be on the road in a bit to do the Larry Meiller Show (Garden Talk) on WI Public Radio late this morning in to early afternoon. I then have some other appointments. I worked on more Home Garden Tour prep this morning among other projects. Tomorrow I'll include some shots from the Home Garden Tour in my blog.

Above and to the right is a compact or bush cucumber called 'Spacemaster' that is in our ornamental edible /compact vegetable display. It is supposed to stay contained and produce lots of 7" long cucumbers. We'll observe its growth on the provided support trellis and hope it stays contained in the narrow bed where it is planted. We have lots of Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris) in this same garden; 24 varieties actually! The stem (petiole) colorations are really neat. To the above left is 'Charlotte' with brilliant red stems and to the right is 'Orange Chiffon'. Directly below is the 'Horizon Coral Spice' geranium (Pelargonium hybrida) that is a Fleuroselect award winner and is featured in the garden beds just east of the English cottage garden. Those beds are also pictured at the bottom. The sky blue, culvert pipe planters are nice verticals with all the surrounding colors and textures.