Tuesday, October 28, 2008

A Beautiful October Day

Nice fall color of the native cranberrybush viburnum (Viburnum trilobum) with a nice backing of the clear yellow fall color of mulberry (Morus alba). It was downright frigid this morning but we ended up with a sunny day with blue skies and temperatures in the 50s. The rest of the week will be a bit warmer and we hope to accomplish lots of gardening and preparations for our lights show. Janice took Kay and Heidi out to clear perennials and tidy up. I am always amazed at not only the volume of work they do but their attention to details like tidying the area up before leaving. Jerry and Bill continued garden clean-up and cutting back shrubs. Larry worked on putting up his arches and drained our "ever flowing urn". He'll focus more on water features later this week as we like to drain and clean everything before it gets too cold. Marianne and Marv popped in and Marianne worked on converting our candy cane displays to LED lights. Barb, a new volunteer, continued with that work and did a nice job. Tony and Rick rototilled, spread gravel, hauled woodchips and stacked rock. A full day to day the least. They also finished the bench area below which was originally a bench set on soil amongst weeds. Looks great now. I ran about 3,000 feet of extension cords in preparation for the lights show. The image below is Dr. Gredler's contribution to the gardens this time of year. Our Grasshopper riding mower has a shredding attachment with a hopper. As he collects and shred leaves, he's able to dump these on our annual beds and we then rototill them in. We like to use as many shredded leaves as possible on our annual beds every fall.


No comments: