4:10 a.m. What’s a horticulturist do when he can’t sleep? Besides realize and wonder how to get out of the giant popularity game of professional horticulture, mostly the same thing I suppose other people do? Work on his garden.

Garden Tasks

A little bit of tax work: gardening is a business or an LLC.

Send emails: list of what needs pruning tomorrow, how much lime the farm center needs to send over, where the 15 gallon Prunus mume will come from.

Print invoices for plants and designs: Of course, that will result in a complaint from the sleepers tomorrow. Printer makes too much noise.

Organize slides for an upcoming lecture. This is the fun part, as the slides are from summer—lush, green, full of color and contrast.

Write blogs, read blogs from other people.

What looks great today

My friend Gussie Filbert stopped by to admire: Prunus mume cloaked in spectacular pink, smelling of cinnamon and buzzing, absolutely buzzing with bees. Reminds me to plant a long hedge of them along a fence line. That way, Tom can collect, next year, Prunus mume honey. I wonder if it will have a cinnamon taste? If you dont have this tree – get it! Nothing else is in full flower today.

Crocus. Just about any little crocus. Lots in my yard. If you are like me and garden without irrigation, you can have lots of crocus, even the deep south. If you have summer irrigation, like most of the professional gardens I work in, you probably drown all your crocus

Daphne genkwa. Really rare but killer lavender, perfectly lavender flowers. Just budding up. Why rare? See above complaint about summer irrigation!