Working Thru The Jet Lag

Today was a combination of dealing with jet lag and getting thru my piles of emails, phone calls, etc. I took a brief tour of the gardens this morning and everything looked great. It was nice to see that we did have some rain although the next batch of weeds is starting to appear. The grounds staff and volunteers have done a great job dealing with this advanced spring and all the duties that are required. All the photos here are from the Netherlands as I didn't get time to take garden shots today as I was downloading my 4,500 other shots from the trip! These all fall in to the "cool, weird, interesting and/or scary theme". In brief (and in sequence), the picture above illustrates a mushroom sculpture at the National Asparagus & Mushroom Museum while the one directly below is a cool "green" bus stop in Eindoven. Posted in no particular order, further down is an interesting sign in Amsterdam (marijuana is technically illegal), colorful stacked pots at the Floriade, a Dutch clog sculpture at the Floriade, part of an umbrella canopy at the Floriade and a huge bowling sculpture in Eindoven. Continuing, there is a weird display with suspended trees (Floriade), a close-up of an "insect hotel" (great for mason bees, etc.), a "green" car (fake grass), two cool driftwood carvings (Apeltern Gardens), an interesting form of a London planetree (Platanus x acerifolia) and a neat rain barrel that allows water to fill the inserted watering can first with overflow going in to that teardrop shape for later use. Further below is another planetree that was pruned to conform to that metal support system, old boots (with moss) along a wall at Apeltern (weird), rock-filled steel mesh "walls" that we saw everywhere with different "contents" (coconut shells in the next photo down) and some very scary gnome/dwarf creatures. I swear they blinked a couple times as I walked by and they will forever haunt my nightmares. I liked the hanging rubber totes with plants seen next followed by a huge pink trowel sculpture and some neat PVC tubes with daffodils (Narcissus) seen at Keukenhof. And lastly, a cool metal dragon at Keukenhof, one of many modified bikes for hauling around kids (that's a two seater and incidentally, no one wears helmets on bicycles there...), a huge telephone, a scary cow and my favorite sign at a garden we visited. The bottom photo is an old auction machine (seen at the museum) used by farmers that would push a button to indicate the highest price they would pay with the auction winner being the first to stop the "pricing clock". Essentially, that clock-like device would rotate from the established top price and ultimately someone would push a button when it got to a price they would pay. The bulb auction had a modern day equivalent which wasn't too different in theory but was all computerized of course.

Today was very productive at RBG with Marv, Terry, Marianne, Jenny, Big John and Pat all outside working on various projects like mulching, weeding, reseeding lawns, etc. The weather was nice and everyone really did a nice job as usual on multiple tasks. Kay was in to work on some more labels and continued her monumental efforts in removing weeds from the daylily collection and Palmer Drive berm. Gena and Myrt were in to weed in the Japanese and formal gardens and Dr. Gredler was in for some mowing. We also saw Charlie and his daughter, Maury and many others today. I was on the WCLO radio briefly this morning with Glenn D. promoting the upcoming Tree Sale (this Fri. and Sat.) as well as Earth Day activities (also this Fri. and Sat.) and the upcoming Spring Plant Sale in May (see our website). Looks like rain tomorrow and another day of catching up.