I know the months of May and June are pretty busy months in the garden, but did not realize just how busy and how tired out I would be at the end of the day-each day! The Montgomery County Master gardeners sponsored a bus trip to Winchester Tennessee to visit Shadow Nurseries. Above is a picture of the 'Venus' cultivar of Cornus kousa x Cornus nuttali that Don Shadow sells (and I believe patented). The dogwood is supposed to be an improvement on the standard Cornus floridus; which is a dogwood I am not a fan of at all. I purchased one of these trees and hope it does well. The bloom gets larger as the tree matures so be patient with small trees if you own one of these dogwoods. Now to find a location and to plant it...
Here is the entire group on the wagon Mr. Shadow drove us around his farm on. It was a VERY hot day to be in the sun and all people aboard were sunburned by lunchtime. Shan and I jumped off to snap the picture of the Venus bloom and we also snapped this picture of the group. His garden will be on the Montgomery Master Gardener tour on June 21st. I can't wait to see his because judging by all he purchased on this day, it must be extraordinary. He and his wife Susan were just some of the very nice folks I met on this trip.
Mr. Shadow is world renowned for his unusual plants and his amazing memory. He shared many many anecdotes and useful tidbits with our master gardener group. I was honored to have met him and to be around him. He even shared some knowledge my father-in-law imparted to me a few years ago about a special bush. I couldn't believe it. I will post on that another time and talk about 'mountain' people. Mr. Shadow has a fondness for mountain people it seems. I have read he has quite the 'Tennessee' accent, but I personally think it is more 'mountain'-the Great Smoky area of Tennessee, North Carolina, West Virginia and Virginia. One of Mr. Shadow's passionate interests is his animals. He has quite the zoo with many cranes, deer, antelope, llamas, emus and tons of other animals. The cranes cracked me up! The birds stood about 3 feet tall and took off running at us while we were on the wagon. They went airborne and DID NOT STOP when they came close to the fence holding them in. THEY CRASHED INTO THE FENCE! No, they were not injured but I thought it was too funny and was quite happy the fence was there. Time to clip those wings!!!! They missed clearing the fence by mere feet.
Here is Mr. Shadow himself. He is looking at his animals and shielding his eyes from the merciless sun. We on the wagon were happy he at least had a roof over his head as he is a red guy from all the sun he gets. This is one amazing gardener. While we walked through the greenhouses and gardens, he picked weeds. Now who amongst you can relate??? All gardeners have this habit of picking weeds, but what commercial gardener would do this?? I was impressed.
The day after my ALL day visit to Don Shadows Nursery, my great blogging buddy Skeeter and her husband the Saint visited Mr. Fix-it and I. What a pleasure. I wished we had had more time to visit but she had a family engagement to attend and we may have kept them overly long. Sorry Skeeter's Mom and sorry you had to rush Skeeter! Those who know me know I very rarely smile in pictures. While both Skeeter and I were hot and sweaty since it was so hot this Memorial Day weekend, I love this picture because you can see both sets of teeth! I think Skeeter may smile broadly more than me, but this is one picture I do like because I am smiling big too. I will try more often to smile this way-okay to my family?
in the garden...hoping for a slowdown.
