40 Cambria Nursery
July 30, 2021
42 Green Thumb Nursery
September 3, 2021
Miss Viola Rides
H ello Readers! I just got back from a SoCal nursery trip with Aunt Patti where we visited 33 nurseries in 4 days. Starting at 7 in the morning, driving all day from nursery to nursery, giving each one a thorough Miss Viola Waltzing right up until the last nursery closes at 6 in the evening—I tell you it is exhausting! AP and I crashed in our beds by 8 every night. But gawd, if that doesn't sound like fun to you, then let me just say: IT WAS!!!!!
For the first time ever on one of our nursery adventures, AP and I flew instead of drove to get to our starting point—which was San Diego. Then we headed north along the coast, hitting a few beaches along the way and swinging inland on occasion—all in a rented SUV.
I could write a book about the adventures that rental cars have given us on nursery trips. Since I'm still organizing thoughts and photos from our SoCal trip, I'll share a couple of rental car escapades (plus a few nursery highlights for you).
For this SoCal trip we thought we had reserved a bigger SUV than the norm, and when we got to the rental place, the vehicle WAS bigger...in the seating area! NOT in the trunk where bigger matters most.
A former rental car we drove on a nursery trip to Santa Rosa. Trunk space verdict: TOO SMALL!!
Long-time Miss Viola readers know that, above all, trunk space for us is prime space. It's where we put our plant purchases as we go from nursery to nursery. We divide the space half-and-half and must pay rent to use some of the other person's half. So AP and I were a bit bummed that this SUV did not give us larger halves.
But we made it work. At least AP did by standing her luggage on end which gained 2 more feet on her side.
My luggage stayed flat because I did not go crazy like AP did with her succulents obsession.
Along with only average trunk space, this SUV liked to beep annoyingly at me. And it beeped often—mainly every time Someone Who Shall Be Nameless only half-buckled her seatbelt before hurriedly navigating us in the direction of our next nursery. (Could it be my habit of being too quick on the gas pedal, taking us to nowhere while waiting on Ms. Navigator?)
We arrived at Hunter's Nursery in Lemon Grove—the first nursery on our itinerary—and wouldn’t you know? San Diego decided to have a heat wave that day with like 100% humidity. Which didn't seem to bother their yucca display any.
This place actually started our trip off perfectly. It had bathrooms open to the public.
In fact, on this entire trip all but one nursery had bathrooms for us gals. (Too bad rental cars don't come standard with some kind of solution to this issue. Hmmm...but second only to expandable cargo space especially for Plant People.) (More cupcake holders too please.)
Vitex trifolia ‘Fascination’ aka ‘Arabian Lilac’
Even though it would use some of my trunk space on our first day, I just had to get another Vitex (new variety to me) because I liked the purple underneath the leaves.
'Arabian Lilac' can grow 8 to 15-feet high and wide, and it blooms in summer. Hopefully I can keep it alive. Thinking I might train it into a tree instead of a shrub.
By the way, Hunter Nursery has a nice selection of natives.
And look at this fabulous collection of shade/indoor plants...
I wish you could smell this vine...
Vigna caracalla ‘Monticello’ (Fragrant Snail Vine)
It smells heavenly, so that on our first day and every day thereafter, the rental car smelled wonderful! (The flowers are most interesting—almost resembling curly fries.)
I paid just $10 for the Vitex and $15.95 for Snail Vine, both in 1-gallon pots. In fact all prices were phenomenally low here, including their succulent prices.
Which is how AP filled up a nice chunk of her side of the trunk at our very first nursery!!!!
Now back to beeping rental cars...
We had another car once that beeped for the entire 5-day trip! We couldn’t figure out why until on the very last day when I exited the freeway behind a slow-moving car that immediately came to a red light. Our car started to beep, and it dawned on me that the beeping means you are tailgating the car in front—or in my defense, coming up on a car too fast because I have a nursery to get to!
Though Aunt Patti and I are getting good at tuning out the beeps, I told Mike once that if I ever bought a new car, he would have to disengage every beeper so I can drive peacefully like I do now.
Our rental vehicles are never the same make or model. But we just hop in and, in order to avoid spending unnecessary time studying the operation manual, I just figure out how the car operates while I'm driving it. Because the risk of damaging the transmission or something comes second to losing nursery minutes.
On a trip around Oregon, we parked across the street from Portland's Thicket Nursery and spent 10 whole minutes in the car trying to figure out how to s l o w l y roll up the windows because they would fly up and fly down very FAST which bothered us.
Thinking we had it figured (actually I got tired of trying), we got out and walked across to the nursery. When we came back, we discovered that Aunt Patti’s purse and suitcase were available to anyone passing by through the OPEN window! And right next to the dumpsters! OMG. That was funny.
Damn car.
But we loved that quaint little neighborhood nursery. There's a Mexican restaurant attached behind with a separate entrance you can use right from the nursery. The food smells wafting through the plant displays were to die for!
Thicket is very boutique-ish—which is the kind of nursery I love most. That AP nor I bought anything that time does not mean it doesn't have a great choice of plants. Sometimes nothing jumps out at us that seems worth using valuable cargo space for.
On another trip, we rented a car with a stupid hatchback we couldn’t figure out how to open. We were constantly waving our legs and arms trying to get the sensor to notice we were there. Hello?! I can only imagine what others thought seeing 2 women, arms chock-full of plants, making strange body motions aimed at the back of their car!
I would not do well with a new car at my age. My mom recently leased a new car that pissed her off because most of the time she couldn't figure out how to make it work.
One day she came to visit and left it running. My husband asked her, "Why is your car running?" and she said, "Damn, I did it again!"
The car I have now can fit 85 1-gallon pots, or 8 5-gallon trees, or 6 large ceramic containers, or 20 bags of FirMulch or even a car-full of pansies!
I’ve even got weeds and bugs happily living inside my car.
How many plants does your car hold?!
Photos courtesy Sheri Lynn Burke. Thicket Nursery photos by Pam Penick.
