bobm
Garden Master
This year's garden tour is now history. We received next to nothing in rainfall this summer, raveged by moles as well as verticilium wilt that all ploted to destroy all plant life. my wife has been away at a N Wash. University for the past week to put on the annual scholarship " Teck Treck " science camp for 7th and 8th grade girls sponsored by AAUW. I had a new roof installed as well as all new windows and hardy board siding in the process of being installed due to delays of widow delivery as well as siding ... ie: construction zone. Not to mention that I had a magnesium deficiency that landed me in to hospital for 2 1/2 days. Since the doctors and nurses insist on poking and proding one about every hour 24 hours a day, one does not get a good night's sleep. So, I crashed at 4 AM and ended up slipping down to the very foot of the hospital bed. When I was awaken once again about an hour later, I woke up with a pinched nerve in my L hip which result that I could NOT even move my leg. By Friday, I could barely move my leg and had to walk with the aid of crutches. All this pointed to total disasterous tour. Getting to this Sunday's Garden Tour. the County personel provided me with only one sided 3 "A" frame directional signs to guide people to my garden wile I needed 5 double sided A frame signs. There was to be 4 Master Gardeners to come and help with each tour... only 2 showed up. Temperatures have been in the mid 90* s for 3 days and at 98* for Sun. The tour was to start at 10 and end at 4 ... however... the public started to come at 9:30 and the last person arrived at 5:15. We were inundated and stopped counting noses at 128 groups . I was on my crutches and talked non stop to the point that I got hoarse. We couldn't even have a moment to eat anything , but drank water with lots on ice by the gallon to stay hydrated. We not only had locals as well as people from Washington and Oregon, but also several from Cal., Montana, Mich., Penn., Canada, one group from China, and one group from Mexico. I showed everyone the good points as well as the damages to expect from garden pests and pathogens which we were constantly complemented on as noone else would talk about unless specificall asked about. I then had a hamburger, took a cool shower and fell into bed. Zzzzzzzzz ! 
