a weekend of gardening

Coe Hall, where Bill Barash lives

Lots of gardening this weekend...

Saturday was the April LIDS meeting at Planting Fields Arboretum. The featured speaker was Bill Barsash, who has worked at (and lived at) Planting Fields for 45 years, as one of their horticulturists. Bill's presentation was wide-ranging and varied, but always interesting. He talked about the relationships between types of flowers, and shared lots of amusing anecdotes. In one of my favorites, he talked about taking dates back to Coe Hall -- the mansion in Planting Fields where he lived. "It's not much," he would say, "but it's home."

Also amusing, several of Barash's slides had UFOs and space aliens photoshopped in. Just for fun. Blair noted that what was really great about the presentation is that Barash had a way of making the topic interesting, so one learns material without realizing it.

LIDS members weeding the beds

Prior to the meeting, Blair and I, along with a dozen or so other LIDS members spent two hours weeding the daylily beds that LIDS maintains. I hate getting up early on a Saturday, and digging in the beds on a cold, wet, raw day isn't exactly fun. But it feels important to me to be part of the LIDS community -- and helping on projects like the daylily beds helps in a way that simply attending the meetings doesn't.

And, of course, the bonus -- We got some daylilies and a hydrangea from the compost heap. I have no idea what variety of daylily it is -- the color, form, size, could be anything. And, later at the meeting, Blair and I each won an asclepias seedling. To top it off, one of the other members was giving away Zinia seeds.

The upshot of that is that Blair and I spent a good part of Sunday planting in our own yard. The

ANd the day after, I'm back in the yard planting.

hydrangea, the daylilies, the asclepias. As well as a coleus, some tulips and some milkweed plants that we already had waiting for planting. The Zinia seeds will have to wait until the middle of May.