A GREEN WISCONSIN...

WILD CUCUMBER...

...FLOWERS

BRIDE AND GROOM

TANSY

Tuesday,  8:30 AM.  59 degrees F, wind WNW, calm at present.  The sky is partly cloudy, the humidity is 80% and the barometer is high, at 30.15".

   Our trip to Milwaukee was an exhausting success, filled as it was with all the to-do of  niece Emily's wedding and  a stay with cousin Susan and her other guests.  We arrived home last night after detouring to Rhinelander and the Northwoods Nursery to pick up thirty potted ferns.  Today we have to catch up with all sorts of things, and of course most importantly, to pick Buddy up from the kennel.  We hope he is glad to see us, but one never knows...dogs sometimes resent having been left behind and retaliate by pouting for a while. And,  Buddy may do so, even though we told him he hadn't been invited.

   The trip to Milwaukee, mostly straight down US Hwy. 51 and I39, revealed Wisconsin to be almost uniformly green...grasses, trees and shrubs, corn...lots and lots of corn.  It was surprising how few other colors we saw, and in many cases it was green on green, shrubs adorned with the greenish flowers of wild cucumber, Echinocystus lobata, that stuck up like a bad haircut.  On the way back, only three days later, the roadsides were yellow with tansy, Tanacetum vulgare, that seemed to be virtually everywhere.

   In between all the hubbub we managed to get to Milwaukee's Whitnall Park and Boerner Botanical Gardens, where I started my career almost fifty years ago.  Among other  responsibilities at the time, I designed and planted two botanical projects, a prairie and a bog garden, and I was anxious to visit them, as I had not seen them for some years.  My  next several blogs will tell you how they are surviving and something about their design and maintenance.