Last week was one of turmoil in my garden.    We decided to put new windows and siding on the house.   Then we decided to enjoy the ravages of a hail storm  which dumped ping pong ball sized hail on the garden for about five minutes - the entire storm lasted 30 minutes.   I always remind new gardeners that we never garden alone. We’re always gardening and partnership with Mother Nature and in this partnership, Mother Nature always has her way. Sometimes we may feel like we win, but I kind of think it’s like the first time you play Go Fish or some other game with your child, they just THINK they won.   In any case, I am using this as an opportunity to address some crowding in my garden beds. In some places everything is just gone and I suppose I could see it as  an early start on fall cleanup.   The one thing I’m grateful for is the replacement of this large 14 x 20‘ Arbor on the side of our house. I had started growing a number of lines on it over the years and then settled on golden hops when I was going through my hops phase.   Over the past few years I’ve decided I’m not a fan of hops. The vines are aggressive and sticky and the sap can be irritating to the skin. And I wasn’t a huge fan of the color.    My student gardeners will help me cover the area with some landscape fabric to make sure it does not come back and then I’m thinking climbing hydrangea would be lovely.         Brevities   #OTD   Today is the birthday of Karl Franz Anton Ritter von Schreibers.     Schreibers was an Austrian naturalist and a botanist. In 1806, Schreibers became the director of the Vienna Natural History Museum. He was a good botanist and ecologist, but his heart belong to minerals and meteorites.   Schreibers made Leopold Trattinick curator of the museum herbarium which was founded in 1807. The Austrian Empire had a thing for plants and horticulture. So expeditions were sent to collect new materials including minerals for the museum.   Many famous botanists were involved with these expeditions including Carl Phillip Von Martinus.   In 1848, during the revolution, the museum caught on fire. The protesters not only destroyed the library Schreibers had carefully built up, they destroyed Schreibers home - his living quarters or right inside the museum. It broke Schreibers heart. He retired and died four years later.         #OTD  Happy birthday to Elias Magnus Friesz who is born on this day in 1794 in Sweden.   The area where Friesz grew up, was rich in fungi and his father was a self-taught botanist. Put the two together, and it’s no wonder Friesz developed a lifelong interest in mycology.   In fact, Friesz developed the first system that was used to classify fungi; so we remember him for that.   There’s a wonderful picture of Elias as an octogenarian. He looks like he could’ve been Dumbledore’s best friend.   He was a happy botanist and he worked tirelessly until the day he died in February 1878.       #OTD   Happy birthday to John Torrey who is born on this day in 1796. Torreywas the first American botanist to study the flora of New York State. The area Torrey botanized included what is now Greenwich Village, the area of the Elgin botanic garden which is now Rockefeller Center, and Bloomingdale which is now the upper side west side of Manhattan, as well as Hoboken New Jersey. Torrey's Calendarian was a phenological record where he documented the plants he observed - recording the species, location, and date of first bloom.     Farmers often kept similar records to track planting seasons and growing cycles.   Thomas Jefferson did the same thing in a book he called The Calendar.   The New York botanic garden has digitized this manuscript so you can check it out when you get a chance.    And, if you live in Colorado, it might interest you to know that Torrey's peak in Colorado is named for John Torrey.         #OTD It's the birthday of the illustrator Walter Crane, born in Liverpool #OnThisDay in 1845. Gardeners appreciate Crane thanks to on