Today in the Garden

From front to back Blue Fescue, Bravo Red Petunia, and Garden Sage 

Early this morning, I weeded the ornamental community garden bed.  A friend saw me from over at the bank and stopped by to chat about landscaping projects and Costa Rica.  I headed home to ready myself for a botanical garden meeting and my last art class; for the latter I was unfortunately late.  After lunch at Pachanga Mexicana, I headed home again to pick up the plants that I'd purchased at the Humboldt Botanical Gardens Foundation plant sale and some that they had so nicely donated.  I also brought a shovel, wire cutters, gopher wire and pruners.  I drove down to the garden, brought the plants over from my car, prepared the bed with some of the Wes Green topsoil-compost mixture purchased by the Humboldt Area Foundation Grassroots Grant.  Thanks to Wes for the discount and thanks again to the Humboldt Area Foundation for the grant.  Then, I proceeded to wrap the Bravo Red Petunia root balls in gopher wire.  I wrapped then planted one by one until I ran out of gopher wire.  I planted a couple of Nepetas after wrapping them too.  After I ran out of wire, I watered the community beds and my allotment bed.  Adrienne stopped by with her Jack Russell Terrier.  We talked about JRTs because I have one too and then she started to water her bed and we said our goodbyes. I gathered my plants and tools and put them in the back of my car.  I was about to leave when I noticed the Magnolia stellatas also donated to our garden by HBGF needed pruning.  I went back to my car, grabbed my pruners and went back into the garden to prune the trees.  I love pruning!  Jeff Dunk stopped by to pick out one of the plants donated to our garden by North Coast Community Garden Collaborative.  He opined that my pruning job "actually looked pretty good".  It kind of made me laugh because of the "actually" and I felt pretty content that someone else appreciated my not-so-novice-anymore pruning ability. 

Prune dead wood first, next branches crossing other branches, next suckers and last stand back and evaluate if the specimen requires any aesthetic pruning and always clip with the sharp side of the blade flush agaist the part of the branch or trunk that is to remain.  I thought I was done with my day at the garden and then as I was leaving I saw the preschoolers coming in line over to the garden.  I ran back to my car to grab my camera, which was in my back pocket and then back to the garden to take pictures of the kids.  I tried not to interrupt and let them go about their business.  They were very interested in gardening except for maybe one or two who were more interested in me.  I left after the first little girl began planting.  I was out of time and had to pick up my son from track practice.  I picked him up, we headed home, passing by the garden.  I worked on the post about children gardening and realized that I hadn't taken photos of the community ornamental bed that I'd been working on, so quickly I headed down to the garden and took some photos of the new plantings and then some of other beds that were looking quite nice in the garden.

And here I am at the end of the day, still thinking about the same community garden I was thinking about this morning when I thought about gardening for a bit before art class.