Gardening Update, September 10th

A few years ago the brick walk, fountain and landscaping at the CCC Field were installed with the objective of providing an attractive space to hold outdoor weddings.  More recently, the lack of maintenance has limited the usefulness of the space.  Now that our volunteers have restored a measure of beauty here, the space is again serving the park as a wedding resource.  The downside of our success is the inevitable litter left behind by such functions.  In the slide show below is a photo showing the artificial flower petals that became part of our gardening work this week.  Another task here this week was installing several plant tags linking to our PlantsMap plant information site.

At the Butterfly Garden this week most of the time was spent looking, unsuccessfully, for a Monarch butterfly chrysalis.   The Monarch Monitoring volunteers have registered the garden as a Monarch Waystation so they can help track the Monarchs.

At the Powhatan Activity Center, we weeded the bed and watered the transplants.  The New England Aster is just now coming into full bloom, and we found a Yellow-tipped Coral Mushroom among the rip-rap near the building.

Views of the CCC Museum Garden and the Rain Garden are included in the slideshow below.  I will be out of town for a few days visiting Claytor Lake State Park, but Eric Gray has stepped up to lead the crew for the next Thursday morning session.