Mother's Day Garden Tour

Wow, who would know that we are going to be receiving rain showers today? The sun is shining, there are beautiful clouds in the sky and it is wonderfully cool and breezy. The birds are chirping happily, and the garden is like a lush park. Even the Koi in the pond seem to be enjoying the day flashing their bright colors as they swim around, and around in our little pond Perhaps they are looking for the exit sign to a bigger pond.

Well it has been weeks since I wrote a blog, and several weeks since the garden tour. I don't know when I have felt more exhausted preparing for something. Because I am anal in my desire to have everything neat and tidy, and look beautiful, and have everything neatly pruned, trimmed, weeded, and to have fresh blooms, I just about wore myself out.

A big thanks to my older brother Michael, a master gardener himself, who traveled up here from Fresno to work with me for two days. He helped me finish pulling all of the old bark (12 years worth) from around all of the roses in the upper rose garden, redistribute it to other locals with no bark, and then recover the area with a finer looser fresh ruby red bark material that makes the roses pop. Michael also spent quite a few hours dressing up the roses and cutting any deadwood or spent blooms so they looked super.

I had to go down to Robinson's Sand and Gravel and get a load of decomposed granite so I could top up all my paths and make them look fresh and neat. That is the heavier stuff and rather than have Michael help with that I asked him to neat up the flower beds. Unfortunately I have the remains of thousands of daffodils that bloomed a few months ago messing up my flower beds and it is still too early to cut off the greenery since that is what replenishes the bulbs for next years bloom. Mike did some trimming, and rearranging and made it all look a lot neater.

The actual tour on Mother's Day started at 10:00 Am in the morning, and I was surprised to see folks here right on the starting dot. Fortunately Placer County Master Gardeners were here staffing the garden to answer questions for people about our plants trees or flowers. I had spent a number of hours the night before tagging all the roses and a lot of less common plants to make it easier. Yes, that was me with the flashlight in the rose garden at 10:30 PM!

The tour was a rocking success. Although it rained a little off and on, droves of people continued to come through the garden. Some carried cameras in addition to their umbrellas and were busy taking pictures of various areas that interested them. At days end when the tour shut down at 4:00 PM, 437 people had come through the garden.

I was amazed at the number but very pleased that it was a success and there were so many nice comments about the garden. You can look at my photos and see for yourself. 

Almost there!

The garden tour is this Sunday and I am satisfied that I will be ready. My brother Michael drove up from Fresno to help work with me on some of the major make overs. He spent two days cutting, dead heading, cleaning up rose bushes, and helping me replace all the bark I was pulling out from around the roses. They really look great. We also added decomposed granite to all the pathways and also redid all of the flagstone patio by the garden shed. Flowers are blooming in a number of places and the roses are starting their first bloom of the season. It should be really pretty.