One week away!

Saving Ducks and Felling Trees

May 25-29 at A.M. Cuddy Gardens

To say this week has been eventful would be an understatement. The gardens are lively with blooms, ducklings are being hatched and we are working hard to prepare for the open gardens. Sue, a professor in the program has been out this week organizing, inventorying, and pricing all the plants that are in the sale next weekend.  We couldn’t do it without her!

Since there shouldn’t be any more frost warnings we have moved all the tropical plants and cacti outdoors from inside the residence.  We have quite a collection of cacti and succulents including very large and old jade and agave plants. The collection of rare and unusual cacti have arrived from the campus greenhouse along with  tropical plants including hanging baskets and many  more plants for the upcoming sale. The patio is becoming a jungle!  It’s a good thing Lucas finished the renovation on the pond early this week.

There has been a momma mallard duck nesting in the compost pile for nearly 3 weeks. We have done our best to protect and not disturb her, even made sure she had plenty of water within an easy reach.  What a lovely day to see ducklings just hatched and ready to make their way to the pond.  To ensure safe travels we helped them along the way. The pond is quite far from the nesting area.

Amongst the joys of this week there has been some sadness as some trees had to be taken down.  One river birch beside the dry garden just wasn’t flushing any growth this year. Jen from OMAFRA says it’s quite typical of river birches with multi stems to girdle themselves. This causes stress from lack of water and nutrients and the trees become more susceptible to pests and diseases.  The old plum tree out by the Magnolia garden has been noticeably suffering for many years. When Mike saw what little growth was coming this year he called it. It’s time he said, the tree just wasn’t doing any good in the gardens.  Sad to lose such a old huge tree, the structure added interest in the garden and the tree will surely be missed.