Saturday, 30 May 2020
The morning was not windy and not rainy, just grey. I wondered if the storm would miss us. The lack of wind meant it would be a fine day to have a garden open and plant sale.
As arranged, Jane and Ben of the Mulchmaid blog came over in the late morning so that we could have a private plant exchange. These…
…for these.
With still no rain and wind, we toured the garden.
Ed Strange came by because I had forgotten to tell him that the sale was tomorrow.
We had not seen him since just before the Covid crisis and stay at home directive began.
Georgia came down from Surfside. You might recall that we toured her glorious garden last summer, after meeting her at our 2019 plant sale.
A couple of women came by because they thought the sale was today, and were happy that I welcomed them to shop and tour…of course.
People always want to know about the fremontodendron. Below, I’m talking about it with Jane, a plantswoman who knew what it was. Most people here have never seen one before.
The sky became ominous.
Wendi came over to see what we had set up so far. I had decided to have a shade and bog plant display in front of our garage door to try to separate the potential crowd for better social distancing. Between that and the deer resistant plants on the Nora House driveway and the plants I had lined up on a path and our patio, the sale plants were visible but lacked explanatory signage that would go out tomorrow morning. By the time Wendi arrived, the rain had arrived as a torrent and I finally knew postponing had been the correct decision.
You can see some excellent photos of what the lockdown has been like at the beach on her husband Bruce’s blog, including one that shows how good our post office garden looks in black and white.
I was drenched by the time I went indoors after some more plant organizing. The rainy afternoon gave me time to write up more of the signs that I like to put on each flat of plants to explain why they are worth buying (or not, in the case of the alstroemerias that I would love to get rid of forever, but that some people adore).
I even had time to paint two new garden quotation signs. That meant I could finally erase one item from the indoor tasks list on the work board, after well over a year!
Here they are in the garden.
However, I did not have time to catch up on my blog reading and have fallen quite behind on the blogs that I try to keep up with.
In the evening, we got the rest of the tables set up ready for plants to be added tomorrow morning.
We are almost ready to greet Sunday’s visitors.
The blogs will be there. Hope your plant sale is a great success.
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It was. We now have four days of work catch up and then finally some time to relax…oh, except for that second Catio!
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Another catio? Holy cats!
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The plant sale IS exciting. I’m so glad you were able to host it after so much uncertainty.
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I hope that everything went in the sale.
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How exciting that Jane got to come see your garden and exchange plants ! Kinda jealous.
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Fremontodendron?! I never understood the allure. It is popular in England, and sometimes gets espaliered! I would not want to handle it like that. I am impressed that it does as well in damp climates. It grew wild near where I went to school, and got quite big, but did not live very long. It is a chaparral plant.
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