Birds of a Feather

Dana would rather go to a nursery than go to Disneyland and with Jim and Peter wending their their way southward for a multi day multi campus college tour trip, Dana and OilMan and I decided to go to several of our favorites. Dana had our itinerary carefully worked out ...one nursery that specializes in blooming flowers, one that has a nice selection of succulents, and garden ornaments, and the infamous pond plant place where OilMan and I almost came to blows over purchasing some papyrus plants.

King's is very close to downtown Santa Rosa and specializes in blooming plants. The tulips were at their height a couple of weeks ago but still eye catchingly colorful with many beautifully planted in pots . It's a fairly small place, but a lot of friendly people work there, and despite the overcast skies and a forecast of rain, it was busy. A young boy was running around with his parents in tow surreptitiously putting plants on the cart his father was pulling. He had a good eye and I don't think his parents wanted to dampen his enthusiasm, but I finally heard them telling him that he had to get their approval before he put anything more on the cart.

The next stop, Cottage Garden nursery in Petaluma, is my personal favorite because they have a wonderful collection of things that don't require being planted or watered. Individuals from a very large shipment of full sized cement Galapagos tortoises lounged all over the grounds, and I ran across the covey of birds in today's picture standing in an eye catching display of euphorbia. They would be visible from the living room and would make quite a statement on our hill, but despite their humble materials, they were well out of our budget. Many of the friendly people who work there bring their dogs with them and we have gotten to know some of them quite well, especially the little one who enjoys lounging on top of a wall of stacked bags of soil. One of the workers was holding forth about dumping Trump while a couple of others were half heartedly suggesting he keep his voice down.

The final stop was the pond garden in Sebastopol, full of stock tanks with koi and pond plants. They also have a beautiful and varied collection of small conifers and bonsais. OilMan has made all the necessary preparations and adjustments to the pump which he felt needed to be made before we bought papyrus plants when they had them, but, as predicted by me, they don't have any  now. They did say they should come in soon and promised to call us when they do.

I've been waiting for a year and made three trips to the pond store , I suppose I can wait a little more. Besides, it was  a nice field trip and neither one of us had the energy to renew the disagreement over whether we should have bought them when they had them.  Not only that, It didn't rain....