For the Record

I am finally putting the finishing touches on my plant inventory. Of course it will need updating on a regular basis if I continue adding plants to my gardens (which is inevitable). And I am still tweaking it (will I ever not be?) Here is a page from it - not the best picture but hopefully you get the idea.

I have to say that this exercise has been educational. I added more detail about each plant using the internet as a reference (so I could copy and paste). Suddenly I became aware that the original list which I had started several years ago, included misspelled plant names and very little detail. It was more like a partial record of plants and where each had been planted. Well, I move plants around so often I decided to scratch that information and add real plant info instead. I found the following 2 sites helpful because they had information about so many of the plants that I have and were more or less easy to copy and paste into my list.

http://www.mobot.org/gardeninghelp/plantinfo.shtml

This service contains information on the over 3500 herbaceous perennials, shrubs, vines and trees which are currently growing or have been grown in the 23 demonstration gardens at the Missouri Botanical Garden's Kemper Center for Home Gardening.

http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/

Welcome to PlantFiles, the largest plant database in the world with 161,860 entries, 176,719 images and 86,284 comments. Currently entries are from 388 families, 4,649 genera, 38,628 species, and 100,564 cultivars.

This site also includes the pronunciation for the botanical names so I have decided to further update my list to include the pronunciations for the 178 plants I have listed so far. Yes, I have a giant task ahead of me.

For the plants that couldn't be found on either of these sites I searched (and searched, and searched) other sites. Most of the pictures used are mine but I did copy a few from the sites I visited. These will be replaced once I have taken the pictures needed this summer. Perhaps all of this searching, typing and pasting caused the injury to my left bilateral tendon which put me in such pain I had to see my doctor. Couldn't lift my arm to type for a couple of days but am on the mend now with the help of an anti-inflammatory and physio-therapy. Gotta get back in shape for the gardening season to come!

While I was searching for plant info I came across this most amazing site on clematis and other climbing vines and have added it to my favourite links.

http://www.clematis.com.pl/wms/wmsg.php/15.html

There is so much information and well designed - I won't try to describe it - check it out for yourself.

So you see, between updating my plant inventory list and posting to this blog, I have been forced to learn new things and re-learn all the things I had forgotten. I feel a little like I am back at school. And that kind of makes me feel younger.

Regards,

Shirley