A Berry Good Day

Over 60 people toured our garden on Saturday. I talked to most of them. Quite a few discovered things I hadn't noticed. Others gave me some good advice. All of them were very complimentary.

Blackberries! 

Tiny Wild Blueberries

Here are a few of the things I learned that I hadn't known before:

Beautyberry

• People who go on garden tours are very nice
• Wild blueberries by the pond are ripening
• There are wild blackberries growing under the gigantic Engelmann Spruce by our garage
• The pretty white flower several people asked me about is an Elderberry and I can make a delicious tea from the flowers now or pick the berries when they're ripe -- but I'll have to fight the birds for them
• We have poison ivy (I had been looking for shiny leaves that shone like patent leather but they're more like polished leather)
• In addition to watching out for ordinary ticks, I need to beware of the tiny deer ticks that carry Lyme disease
• Lyme disease is awful
• An unremarkable row of bushes I've wondered about are actually Burning Bush (which I had in Boulder) and they will turn a spectacular orange red in the fall
• The bush with tiny pink flowers above its leaves instead of below is called "Beautyberry" (Callicarpa japonica)
• We should put up a bat house by the pond because it's a perfect location
• There is a small, rare and beautiful purple-leafed redbush tree in our back yard and I was invited to someone's house to see how magnificent it will be when it's mature
• The reason my raspberries are so small is because they're choked with weeds. I wanted to tell this helpful visitor that I had pulled out wheelbarrows full of weeds and she could look at my blog to see proof. Instead, I invited her to help me pull some out. She said she had to go play tennis. 
• There might be a Butternut Tree (Juglans cinerea) by the pond
• There is such a thing as a Butternut nut and it's not just a kind of squash, a ski area in Massachusets or an ice cream flavor

Elderberry Flower

Elderberries

Redbud tree

Butternut nuts -- still to be varified

When I first moved to Boulder, I went to several garden tours and wished that my garden was big enough to be able to include in a tour. I even entertained a fantasy that I could partner with my two neighbors, Anne and Paulette and show our three as one stop. There were no fences and our gardens flowed together nicely. Saturday's tour was so much fun, I wish we had done it.