Leslie's Latest News

Intern Projects at Garden in the Woods

I just spent a hot couple of hours hearing from the summer interns and other staff and volunteers at Garden in the Woods about the projects they have been working on. It was good to see progress in so many areas.

One of the interns worked on cleaning up the stock beds that had been left behind when the main nursery moved out to Nasami Farm in western MA. These raised beds were filled with slow-growing spring ephemerals that were used as source plants for dividing and potting up for sale. The beds are entirely filled with various types of trilliums and lady's slippers and other native plants, and can look spectacular when in full bloom. But in recent years, they'd been left alone and had declined a bit. So our intern neatened up the beds, installed gravel walkways around them, removed all the plants that didn't belong, tested and amended the soil, divided the plants that needed dividing, and installed some id labels. Right now there's not a lot to see, as most of the spring ephemerals have died back for the summer, but it should be great next spring.

Another intern project was cleaning up the wildlife garden, by widening and edging paths, removing some overgrown shrubbery, adding a small sitting area, and introducing some design elements, such as a rustic arbor and some "habitat boxes". I especially liked one of the features of the arbor, "windows" framed in rustic wood that seemed to be "floating in the center of the arbor - held in place by invisible supports. 

Several volunteers worked on installing a raised platform in the meadow to provide an elevated viewing area to get up above the tall meadow plants. The hardest part was digging the 4 1/2 foot footing holes entirely by hand. 

One of the staff is working on an edible garden to illustrate some of the food plants used by the native Americans. In addition to the "three sisters" of corn, beans, and squash planted together, there is an area of permanent plantings including many native nuts and berries, jerusalem artichokes, wild onions and leeks, and fiddlehead ferns. The plants are still small and the area doesn't yet have interpretive signage, but it looks like it's going to be a great exhibit in future years.

We also heard from two of the conservation interns about their summer of slogging through swamps and holly forests and other natural areas to inventory native and invasive plants. In addition to learning about the technical details of plant id and the practical details of dressing for wet weather, they also had the unnerving experience of encountering an abutting resident with a shotgun who wasn't afraid to use it. Yikes! 

I'm looking forward to showing off some of the new features on my next tour. I have a cart tour scheduled for next week. 

Worldcon '09

Alex and I just spent a week in Montreal attending the 2009 Worldcon, Anticipation. We had a lovely time - the Worldcon was a bit smaller than usual, so more intimate than some. We had a great suite hotel room just across the street from the Convention Center, right on the edge of the old city, and just a few blocks from a very colorful Chinatown. So we had easy access to food establishments, and lovely places to walk full of beautiful old buildings. The walk to the party hotel was not too long, and punctuated by open squares full of trees and fountains. Montreal is a lovely city.

We were hurt a bit by the exchange rates shifting in the wrong direction just before our visit. So the restaurants (except for Chinatown) did seem rather expensive, and the hotel bill is going to be a small fortune. But so it goes.

We've done a little sight-seeing around the city. Before the con we walked all over the islands that had been the home of Expo '67 and previously posted some pictures of that. Yesterday we visited the Botanical Garden; I haven't posted all those pictures, but here is one of the highlights - the Lotus blossoms. There were great Japanese and Chinese gardens, an exhibit of water plants, an extensive alpine garden, perennial gardens, useful plants gardens, a lovely section of small city garden designs - even a toxic plants garden. Sadly, we ran out of time, so whizzed through many of these and entirely missed the native plants garden. On the way back, we drove around and over Mount Royal. 

At the con, I did a little bit of helping out, and a lot of schmoozing with friends. Attended several program items, notably two items with Paul Krugman and one with guest of honor Neil Gaiman. Dutifully attended the business meeting every day and made one helpful amendment that got adopted. Saw the Hugo Awards Ceremony, but not the Masquerade (except in photos), since there were fireworks down at the Old Port that night. Didn't got to many parties, due to hotel/elevator problems, but did enjoy the Past Worldcon Chairs party on the last night. Even managed to fit in some gaming. It was a very pleasant convention.

Today we need to pack up and leave our luxurious suite and head off in my car that makes strange noises for parts unknown. We still have a ticket to the Biodome, which we hope to visit today, and then will drive off in the direction of Quebec. We have no hotel booking, so life may get interesting and I'm not sure when I'll have access to the internet again. 

All verklempt

The garden class celebration yesterday was surprisingly emotional.

As I was getting ready to head over, the lightning lashed and the heavens opened with an insane downpour, so it looked liked the party was going to be spoiled. We set up the refreshment tables and chairs in the hallway near the courtyard entrance (instead of outdoors as we had been hoping to). Parents started coming and we mingled and looked at the photo montage posters the children had put together (using many of my photos plus others contributed by some of the adults, plus the photos the kids themselves had taken down by the river).

But then a little miracle happened - the rain ended and we were able to walk outside. By the end of the party, the sun was out and people were able to get a good look at the garden. The kids were stationed in each of the different areas and as people walked around, they were able to tell the visitors about what they'd done and what types of plants were in each area.

Then we gathered inside again for some short speeches. The administrator of the program described it briefly and thanked all of us who helped. Then each of the kids read a short paragraph about what they learned. Then we all got some gifts and were able to say a few words. We talked about how hard the kids worked, and how we felt like we were all in a team together. I told the story of the kids cheering on Henrietta when she was digging up a donated plant ("Go Henrietta! Go Henrietta!).

Many of the parents approached me and told me how much their child had enjoyed the program - talking about it at home and looking forward to getting to school each day. And the kids all said they wanted to join the garden club and hoped we would all be coming back in the fall.

Each of the volunteers was given a little bag of gifts including a group photo (which is now proudly displayed in my living room), a collection of the students' work, a card with notes from each of the students, and a bookmark made from pressed flowers from the garden. Very sweet.

And then after the visitors left, those of us who worked on it were left to feel really good about how it went, the good friends we had made, and the definite feeling that we had made a difference in those kids' lives. What a great feeling!

Gardening - Now it's Hot

So after weeks of rain, and one decent week of not-rain, we are now coping with a week of heat and excessive humidity. But the kids are sticking it out and we have a really nice garden space ready now for our graduation celebration tomorrow. I hope we get a good turnout and can get outside and really enjoy the results of our efforts. 

Tuesday was a hard-working day at a local community farm, Waltham Fields. I've got some photos posted of Facebook, and now that they've changed their security rules, I hope you can see them without having a Facebook account. I also have a few photos taken by one of the other volunteers, Wende, that shows me working with the kids to plant carrots.

Yesterday, I went exploring at Gore Place, which is a 40-acre estate about 2 miles from my house, just over the border in Waltham. I have two batches of photos. The first, taken with my iPhone, shows the walk around the grounds and a little bit of a lovely hidden perennial garden I found. Then I went back today and took more pictures of the secret garden with my better camera. 

The walk around the perimeter is about a 1-mile walk, so that will be a nice place to go for some of that exercise I'm trying to get. There are broad, grassy paths through trees, open fields filled with wildflowers, a shady walk along a brook, and then the formal front lawn of the 1806 estate building leading down to an old ha-ha. And then on my way out, I can duck behind the tall hedges into the secret garden and see what's in bloom in the perennial beds. 

So now I'm running around trying to get ready for our trip to Montreal. I just mowed the lawn; the car has had it's checkup. Tomorrow is the garden party and I need to get my hair cut. Then I can start thinking about packing. I'm not sure exactly when we'll be leaving - probably Saturday. I love that we're going by car and don't have to stick to a fixed schedule. 

Week 2 of the gardening class

We had another good week of the gardening class. A few more students showed up (their families had been on vacation the first week) and we only got rained on a little. 

On Monday, we had a major work day, digging up and ripping out weeds in the main raised bed we are planting. We found some interesting things - the most interesting being a bit of jawbone with teeth that appears to be the jawbone of a predator - probably a cat.

I brought a few bits of show and tell and gave a short talk on spring ephemerals, showing the leaf and hinged seed pod of the twinleaf and explaining how it was named after Thomas Jefferson. Also a flower, leaf, and seed pod of a Celandine poppy, showing the eliasomes on the seeds which are like candy to ants and which entice the ants into collecting and burying the seeds in their middens. The kids were interested and asked to plant the twinleaf seeds; and the teachers and gardeners also told me after that much of this was new to them. 

On Tuesday, a reporter and photographer showed up. Unfortunately, this was a less visually interesting day, as all we did outdoors was spread much on the weeded area, but the visit did result in an article which appeared on the front page of the local paper. 

Indoors, however, we went through an interesting exercise. Henrietta and I had prepared a list of the plants we were obtaining for this bed, along with the height, color, and bloom time. Henrietta went through the list, describing the plants and giving some information about what she considers as a designer when siting the plants. For example, bleeding heart blooms early, then its foliage gets a bit ratty, so it's good to have something in front of it that will hide it later in the season. Then we asked the kids, in small groups, to plot out a layout for the garden. Then we met in a circle and everyone showed their design and Henrietta commented on them. It was a difficult exercise, but did a good job of showing them how to go about designing a garden. 

Wednesday was the day of our field trip. This week we visited the home of a local gardener, Dawn, who was donating some plants to the program. After touring her garden, we dug up the plants she was donating. One bleeding heart was particularly resistant to being dug up, and as Henrietta went at it with a shovel, the kids gathered round and started changing "Go Henrietta! Go Henrietta!" It was very charming.

We loaded the plants into three wheeled carts and the kids took turns hauling them back to the Middle School - a .6 mile walk, according to Google maps. Along the way, we stopped to look at some nice front-yard gardens and identify some of the plants. Of course, halfway back the heavens opened and we all got totally soaked by the time we got back to the school. We unloaded the plants in the courtyard and left them for planting on the following day.

Unfortunately, I missed the planting on Thursday because I had a conflicting meeting I really need to attend. The sun finally came out, and it was a beautiful day. I did go by the school afterward, and saw the results of the work, and it looked great! Of course, it was a bit spotty, as it always is when you start a new garden. But you could imagine how it would look when the plants take hold and fill in, and it will be great.

We had a meeting with the teachers after class on Thursday to plan next week's activities. The coordinator of the program mentioned that she'd gotten some feedback from one of the parents that their child was really enjoying it; the teachers also mentioned that the kids were asking why they couldn't come on Friday as well. So on that scale at least, it has been a success.

This week, we start work on a new section of the courtyard, and have a visit from a nature photographer. Our field trip will be a nature walk along the Charles River. And now I've got to run to get there for today's class.

Garden class kicks off

This past week was the first week of the Middle School gardening class that I'm helping with. And I'm pleased to say that it all went very well, except for one day when we got rained out. It actually was cloudy with some light sprinkles every day, but on Thursday it was pouring with lightning, so we didn't even try to work outside.

Day 1 was just orientation, when we all introduced ourselves and met the kids. We showed them the area that we will be planting, the tools we'll be using, and described some of the field trips we will be having throughout the course. We also toured the Middle School courtyard and introduced them to some of the plants and trees there.

There is a science teacher and a language arts teacher working on the project also, and they are tying their teaching in with what we are doing in the garden. They are having the kids keep journals which they share with us each day, talking about what they learned each day. 

On day 2, we go our hands dirty. Henrietta, the landscape designer who is the head volunteer and who has been doing amazing work getting all this organized, brought buckets of compost from her garden, along with pots, seeds, and soil amendments. We explained all of the components and had them mix up potting soil and plant seeds of beans (to take home), pumpkins, gourds, parsley, and sunflowers. We are hoping these will sprout in time to be set out in the garden in the 4th or 5th weeks of class.

The kids were a little restrained on the first day, but after they had the fun of actually doing something themselves, they started to get into it. And on the third day, when we had our field trip, they really got excited. The field trip was to Henrietta's garden, which is about a mile from the school. We'd arranged for all the kids to be dropped off at Henrietta's in the morning, and then we walked back to school after we were done.

At the garden, they got to learn about more different kinds of plants. In addition, Henrietta showed them her compost piles and showed how garden waste decomposes into compost. She had them sieve compost, showing them where the compost that they had planted in yesterday had come front. And when they got back to the classroom, the science teacher taught them more about soils and compost, which of course made a lot more sense to them after they had actually seen it in action. And with the language arts teacher, they learned about different poetry forms, such as haiku, and wrote some poems about the things they had seen at Henrietta's.

One big hit of the field trip was that Henrietta had arranged to visit a neighbor who keeps bees. The neighbor actually came over in full bee-keeping regalia and kept the kids (and adults) entranced for about as hour. She opened up a hive and let us see the bees inside, and then gave us samples of different kids of honey and wax that she has harvested from her own bees. The kids had lots of questions, and it was hard to drag them away. I learned things, too. 

To keep them entertained during the walk back, we introduced them to 4 plants at Henriettas, then gave them maps so they could mark off whenever they saw those plants on the way back to school. The plants were pretty common: daylilies, hosta, geranium, and euonymus, so there were plenty of sightings. 

On the 4th day, we were hoping to start weeding the bed. But as mentioned above, the rain was coming down like crazy, and there was lightning and thunder, so we didn't even want to try it. Hopefully Monday will be better and we'll get a little extra time to make up for missing a day. So instead they spent the full morning in the classroom. One of the things they did was make thank=you notes for the bee lady - making big honeybees out of construction paper and then writing their notes on the bees. They were very cute. 

We'll be getting some new kids next week, as some families who signed up for the course were out of town on vacation this week. It's too bad they missed the first week, but so it goes. Next week, we'll start by weeding the bed. Then we're visiting another garden to dig up and bring back some donated plants. After we get back, Henrietta will explain how she decides how to lay out the plants, and we will work together as a group to figure out what should go where. And, if time permits, we'll start planting.

I'm going to have to miss Thursday's class next week because I have a board meeting I have to go to at the exact same time. I have to say, I'll be really disappointed to miss out - it's really been a lot of fun.

In addition to attending the activities and helping schlep things around, answer kids' questions, etc., I've been doing a little bit of behind-the-scenes work. I managed to arrange for a $500 grant to pay for the tools, supplies, and some plants that we will be purchasing. I've recruited a well-known local photographer and naturalist to lead a walk along the Charles River in week 3. I've helped with donating some supplies and finding others on the internet. I suggested the idea of constructing a wattle fence if we have time, and researched internet articles about how to do it. 

But Henrietta has really been the force behind it all. She has such enthusiasm for gardening, which becomes very evident to the children as she works with them. It's been a real joy to watch her in action, and also to meet the other local gardeners (Deborah, Wende, Ann, and Lois) who have been helping out. And the kids are fun, too, especially as I'm getting to know them now. Definitely a great volunteer activity.

Taking a deep breath

The spring push of volunteer activities is over now, so I'm at the beginning of a 2-week lull before the summer gardening program starts. It's wonderful to not be running around to activities every day, and I'm hoping to be able to catch up on some of the long-deferred items on my to-do list. Especially now that the incessant rain has abated for a bit and I'll be able to get out and work on the garden. Luckily, it's still cool and relatively comfortable to work outside.

Some of the things that happened in the past week...

I had my annual DPP visit and checkout. That was relatively uneventful until I put my raincoat on to leave, was chatting with the technician, and suddenly noticed that my arm was feeling wet and there was a growing pool of blood on the floor under my right arm. No big deal - my IV site had just not closed properly - but I was a bit upset because I was wearing one of my favorite sweaters and the arm was now covered with blood. A couple of the technicians took it in hand and worked over it for 10 minutes with hydrogen peroxide wipes, then I took it home and soaked it in Tide. The blood stain came out, but the whole arm ended up slightly bleached in color. I wish they had just tried cold water first, but what are you gonna do?

I led a garden tour for a lovely group of docents from the Museum of Fine Arts. Being tour guides themselves, they were a lot of fun. At one point, when I didn't know the name of a plant they asked about, I went into my whole, "This is where I tell you that we have 1500 species in the garden and, sadly, I must admit that I don't know them all." They came right back with, "Unacceptable - we demand a new guide!" and we all broke up into laughter. 

But it was a great group, and at the end they all came by to thank me and expressed wonder that I knew so much. (Funny, I'd thought that I'd said "I don't know" several dozen times, but I'm glad that they were happy.)

I also shadowed a 3rd grade tour given by Ginny, one of the best kid's guides, and learned a lot of stuff from her. And the following day, I did my own solo 3rd grade tour and think I did pretty well. It was a funny group - 4 boys and 4 girls that acted like two different groups. The boys tended to run on ahead and talk a lot, while the girls lagged behind, but were more observant and spotted more interesting things. The girl who was afraid of snakes spotted the black water snake at the pond, which I hadn't seen all season. Luckily, he was out on a floating island and not bothering anyone. 

It was cloudy and rainy for all of these tours, but what are you gonna do?

Over the weekend, I got in one non-rainy day of outside work, and then the rain came back again. But I got totally caught up in following the events in Iran on Twitter. I'd hooked into a couple of eye-witnesses in Tehran who were giving fascinating blow-by-blow reports of what was happening there, and I found myself hanging on every word. (See @StopAhmadi and @persiankiwi, for example.) As I write this morning, it's beginning to look like the demonstrations may be having some effect. This paragraph is green in honor of the brave citizens of Iran who are insisting that their voices be heard.  

On Monday, I went on a great garden tour that we'd arranged for the Garden in the Woods guides. Of course it was raining again. We visited two gardens in the western suburbs - one around a Bauhaus-style house in the Lincon woods near the Sudbury River and Walden Pond and one around an 18th-century Concord farmhouse. Both very different and both very lovely. We had planned to have a picnic lunch on the grass at the second house, but due to the rain we got invited into the screened porch, which still had a great view of the garden. 

Here are two pictures from the tour; you can find more here.

Yesterday, we had another planning meeting for the summer gardening program at the Middle School. We have worked out the sequence of gardening events week by week, and at this meeting, we were helping the teachers work out accompanying lesson plans that would make sense. We worked out the first two weeks in some detail, and will go on to the remaining weeks after we see how things go. 

The first week, we'll concentrate on learning about soil, and will start on cleaning out the weeds in the areas we will be planting. The field trip will be to Henrietta's garden, where the kids will get acquainted with some of the perennials, see a compost pile, and work on sifting compost to make soil for planting seeds. On the second week, we'll continue preparing the beds, adding soil amendments, and will take another walk to a nearby garden where we'll dig up some perennial divisions to bring back. In the classroom, they'll be learning about plant structures and life cycle. There is also a book they'll be reading - I forgot the title, but it's about a diverse group of kids working on a community garden.

I'm also helping to get a small grant from a local organization to help pay for some of the plants, seeds, supplies, and tools. So far that's just involved some e-mailing them with information about the program and putting together a spreadsheet of expenses. I've also helped by recruiting a local naturalist to lead a nature walk along the river in week 3, and will be donating some miscellaneous supplies. And have been contributing ideas to the activities and curriculum as best I can. We'll be putting together a schedule to insure that members of the gardening team will be available on each day to assist the teachers. The gardening activity will be mainly from 10:30-11:30 each day, except when we do the field trips (which will be longer), so that's easily doable. 

Now I'm about to begin a week and a half where I have almost nothing scheduled! It will be like taking a vacation! 

My garden on Memorial Day

A new photo album on Facebook

At the garden

Dogwood and lilac

Soggy day at Garden in the Woods

Distant Boston

From the top

Hemlock Hill

Low sun at the Arboretum

And the sound of mourning doves, children's voices, and distant traffic.

Class over for the day

And it was right across the street from the Arboretum. Gorgeous place for a quick walk.

My 1/7 of an acre

I'm still in a mad frenzy of house rearrangement and sorting through things, which, of course, has resulted in finding many things that I hadn't known where they were. One is this plan drawing I did of my house and yard to serve as a cover for a garden apa called The Secret Garden back in 1996. Not a whole lot has changed since then. Some trees have come and some have gone, but the basic outlines are much the same. 

Family ties

I've been thinking a lot about family lately. Probably because of Obama's visit yesterday to his dying grandmother and the neighborhood where he grew up in Hawaii. His grandmother is just about my father's age - she will be turning 86 tomorrow; my Dad would have been 86 on Nov. 13. 

For the last few days I've been working on my autumn garden, which is also a bittersweet activity. The sun is low in the sky, the trees are putting out their last fiery show, and the vegetable plants in the garden are dried and blackened by the frost. I've spent two days turning the compost in my three bins, freeing one up for the remains of this years tomato squash plants, and later the fallen leaves. I love to turn compost, actually. It's so cool to see how the weeds and dead leaves turn into rich, brown, crumbly compost - just waiting to nurture the  roots of the new plants I'll be setting out next spring. 

When I was done, I took one last ceremonial swing on the hammock before putting it away for the winter, admiring the deep green grass and the bright yellow marigolds still bravely blooming on their withered stems. I thought about my grandparents who never got to see my little plot of land, so much like their own little yard in Stratford, where my grandfather raised his own vegetable garden at the back end  of the yard behind my grandmother's flower beds. 

My brother follows in the farming tradition, but living in the Midwest, he does me one better. His last note included a photo of his proud new possession: a Ford 801 tractor that he bought at a farm auction. He's quite confident he can get it running again .... 

On the estate front, I had a little kerfluffle with some a house ownership issue yesterday. But it looks like it will be saved by 1) a nicely responsive town assessor in Stratford who is helping me sort it out, and 2) my father's tendency to save every piece of paper that crossed his hands that might have any significance whatsoever.

I was working on my own house insurance issues, and happened to check my town's online assessment of my house. So that made me wonder if my Dad's house was also listed online. It was, and much to my surprise, I found that its ownership was recently changed to my mother's name. Since my mother died in 1996, this was not good - it needs to be in the name of the estate.

My first thought was that my father had never registered my mother's death with the land records office in Stratford (which is one of the probate steps you have to do). So perhaps the house was in both their names still, and when he died, he was taken off, leaving my mother as the sole owner.

A half hour of furious searching through my Dad's files led me to a file labeled "Helen's Probate", and right in the front of that file was the appropriate document, complete with the receipt that showed that he had in fact properly filed it with the land records court. It had the seal and all. I should not have doubted him. 

So it appears the mistake was at their end, and I'm hoping that with the help of the town assessor, who was very quick to respond to my e-mail inquiry, this can be quickly straightened out. I'm only glad I found this early, since it could have been an impediment to selling (if we ever get that far). 

So Dad, thanks for being organized! You set me a standard to aspire to.

Big Bugs

The Garden in the Woods Big Bugs display is opening tomorrow. I can't make opening day because I'll be in Connecticut, but I did get to attend the walk-through with the artist this morning.

We had Big Bugs several years ago, but it looks different this year because there is a new sculpture, a daddy long-legs, and most of the other sculptures have been placed in different locations, which really gives them a different flavor. The only ones that are the same place (and even they have been shifted a bit) are the dragonfly in the pond and the damselfly in the swamp. And the dragonfly's wings have been redesigned, so that gives it a bit of a different look, also.

I didn't take pictures this morning because of the big crowd that was walking around with Dave Rodgers, but you can see the photos from the previous exhibit here.

One other new addition were the two sculptures that were made last year on the PBS kid's show Design Squad. You can see the show here. One sculpture was a stickbug made of fitted together logs, and the other was a luna moth with delicate wings of twigs lashed together with cord. Guess which was done by the boys and which by the girls. Dave hated having to judge it, because he liked both sculptures, and wouldn't even tell us which one he picked. 

Pruning

I never quite know what I'm going to be working on when I step out into the yard. I look around and enjoy the flowers and the scents and then I decide what bothers me the most. Today it was some dead branches in my Tupelo tree, and that sent me off into a pruning frenzy that made good progress but is still not quite complete. I stopped due to sheer exhaustion and the fact that my pole pruner broke and I need to get a new one.

The biggest job was working on the giant juniper in my front yard that tries to take over everything around it. I cut back most of the lower branches, but couldn't reach the high-up ones with my lopper. So I hauled out the pole pruner and the first time I pulled on the cord, something snapped and the whole mechanism fell apart. It looked like it had rusted through, so I decided to scrap it and buy a new one.

I did keep it stored in my shed, but one winter the roof sprung a leak and I think the pruner was in the area that got wet, so probably that's what did it.

Anyway, I have 5 bundles of prunings - 3 of which are neatly tied and ready for pickup and two which still need to be tied. The next yard waste pickup is Friday, so I have time. And my arms are tingling with lots of tiny pokes and scratches. I really need to remember to wear long sleeves when I'm doing this sort of work.

There's tons of stuff blooming now. The lilacs are at their peak, plus dogwood, azaleas, wood phlox, moss phlox, celandine poppy, tiarella, Solomon's seal, violets, and tulips, among others.

Sometime this week I need to do more planting in my veggie garden.

It's a busy week coming up (again). Monday: Friends of the Riverfront meeting, prep for Healthy Eating, and some estate work. And I really need a haircut. Tuesday: Healthy Eating. Wednesday: Garden tour for the Boothbay Harbor Garden Club and a Healthy Eating leaders' discussion meeting. Also maybe MCFI if I'm still mobile. Thursday: Trees for Watertown lecture on the Urban Forest. Friday: Conflict between a dermatologist follow-up appointment and going on a garden tour of a private garden in Lincoln. I need to decide soon. Then the holiday weekend and a chance to rest (or paint my porch - whichever I'm up for).

Lovely garden tour

I had a lovely garden tour this morning. It was a garden club from the Cape, and they were all really interested in everything and really enjoyed seeing new things and learning about new plants. I just love leading groups like that. At the end, several of them shook my hand and thanked me personally, which is not the usual reaction I get.

And the garden was in a beautiful state. Some things had passed, but lots of things were in bloom. The understory trees - redbuds, dogwoods, and silverbells were at their peak. There were lots of azaleas and woodland phlox and trilliums, and the yellow lady's slippers were just starting.

The redesign of the entry area has been completed. The picture shows the new water feature, which is really cool. The water runs down over the rock surface, then sinks into the ground and gets recirculated. It really gives the feeling that you're entering a special place.

They've also begun the installation of the green roof in the Idea Garden.

After the tour, I just sat for a while drinking it all in. It was like being in a fairyland.

I've decided that next year I'm going to try really hard not to schedule anything I don't have to in May, so I can spend more time outdoors during these wonderful all-too-short weeks of spring bloom.