Never Volunteer . . .

. . . to propogate the agave if you don't have your garden gloves:

Click on the picture to enlarge it and see my bloody hands!

The Head Hatter made it look so easy!

Just loosen the soil and the pups pop out. Say that three times fast!

The tender plants are being brought into the greenhouse at Rutgers Gardens and prepared to over-winter.

The agave pups were potted up by another volunteer:

Other plants, like these tiny Colocasia (elephant ear), are being separated and then stored as bare-roots.

After I finished the agave, I decided to tackle some canna. No thorns! Maybe if I had seen this, I would have chosen something else:

Those canna rhizomes are tough!

By far the best job of the day was separating the Society Garlic:

Those are canna leaves at the bottom of the photo. This garlic is decorative rather than culinary, I believe, but it still smelled great. The woman who was working with it said she was getting cravings for pizza. It put me in the mood for lasagna.

Outside of the greenhouse was more evidence of Ernesto's power:

Luckily, it missed the greenhouse. They are going to try and save this tree.