Garden and Kitchen-related Auction. For your donations, think baked goods, jams and jellies, fruits and vegetables, plants or gardening tools, books, etc. In April we have John Roberts from the Agricultural Extension to teach us about garden pest management. We‘re still working on May, but in June we have lined up Maria Pinto to talk about foraging mushrooms. Whew!
It was heart-warming to see the turn-out and the groaning tables at the Holiday Dinner. Marci Green‘s article will go into more detail on that, but I just hope you all had as fine a meal and celebration as I did.
On a more somber note, Bernard Pages is planning to organize a memorial service for Donnie Brown at the Mounts Botanical Garden sometime in the spring. We will keep you posted on that.
See you at the meeting January 30
Your friendly neighborhood webmaster,
Mary
News from the Garden of Well Being/Herb Garden
It’s a New Year and a rainy one at best, and on top of that, the temperatures are up and down daily and the skies are overcast. This seems to be great for the plants, not so good for the tourists.
The small herbs we planted, are flourishing and getting bigger. The parsley, dill, pot marigold, chives in the culinary garden are thriving, The Chia plants add color as do the nasturtiums that are showing their blooms.
The Cosmos around the fountain needed to be cleaned up. The beauty of that plant is that it reseeds and grows quickly into new plants. At first it looked a little empty and last week I planted 6 Nasturtiums and to my surprise, they are already blooming in yellow, orange and shades in between and it’s only been a week.
The cacao tree went through a transformation with a thorough grooming about a month ago. At first, I felt a little sad because I lost protection from the big leaves when it rained. But, guess what, now the tree branches see the daylight which the blooms of the tree need very much. There are at least 30 to 40 cacao pods on the tree. This is the first time, I have seen that many.
I have a new friend in the garden, he visits every time I am there. He is a Cardinal, he is very vocal. I assume he is calling for a mate. I finally got a good photo of him. I am told by my bird watcher friend that he is a male because of his very red color; the ladies, she tells me are less colorful.
The Origami display in the garden is amazing and, definitely worth a trip even if it looks like rain. Just bring an umbrella or a rain jacket.
Ingrid Menz