We (the Asian Collections) got a new volunteer last week, Tatton Blackner: I gave him the most difficult, physically demanding job we had

Tatton came back this week to finish the job that I selfishly saved for him, and brought his parents, Rod and Diana to help.  They were in town from Paso Robles, California innocently visiting. Wow.They may not make that mistake again!

We're redoing some of the area surrounding the Garden Club of America Circle and that involves a few removals. A semicircular bed of Sarcococca lay between the paved circle and a low terracing dry stone wall above it. Sarcococca is a perfect plant for the site; it's a low evergreen with pleasantly fragrant flowers. The only problem is that one side of the circle is much wetter than the other and Sarcococca doesn't like that much moisture. The planting was beautiful on the south end, but less happy the farther north you went, finally becoming embarassingly patchy for its last 20 feet.We decided it had to go. Between a thick root system and the heavy mud it was growing in,removing it was not easy.

In conquering the Sarcococca,they followed the steps outlined in the pictures. First they analyzed the situation, then undercut, then pulled and rolled, then loaded it, finally standing triumphant over the vanquished groundcover. We didn't compost everything; we used portions of the healthy area to patch another Sarcococca bed.

I feel bad not knowing who this is working in the pool, but, hey!, look at that hat and those gloves and the long sleeves and boots???

I guess I could have asked, but I was in a hurry. I do know it's one of Brad's dedicated volunteers skimming junk. I only get glimpses of what goes on behind the scenes to keep the pool beautiful, the fish healthy, and the whole system running smoothly. From those snippets, I know the tolerances are small, it requires constant attentton and tweakng, to avoid that natural  tendency towards increasing entropy that can result in disaster. Still, we don't have major disasters and the pool is unfailingly beautiful.

I'm looking forward to a Koi round-up later this month. Sort of.