55 Robby’s Nursery & Calico Gardens
April 15, 2022
57 Plant and Pottery Outlet
May 13, 2022
On the Road Again
A unt Patti and I needed to get away for a weekend nursery shopping trip. But instead of driving the usual rental car or taking her car—which is brand new, except that in choosing it she compromised on trunk space (eyeroll), call her crazy—for this weekend trip we decided to take a different brand new vehicle…
Surprise!!! Your eyes don’t deceive you, my friends. For the low price of $60,000, I finally got a port-a-potty! No really…I did.
Mike was sick of me complaining (as you probably are) about inconvenient or downright unavailable bathroom facilities on nursery trips. So I took care of the situation!
I love love love my new van. I can cram trees, shrubs, containers, tools, everything in it and still have room to pee!
In one work day with this van, I shopped at 4 nurseries (for just one project) and was able to get all my purchases easily inside. No more multiple trips! Plus I have my other car for smaller jobs and when I’m not likely to need to pee.
BTW, did you notice how Mike always has to be on top?! His logo 🙂
Check out the “cargo hold” in this thing…
All that shelving on both sides! Mike also installed k-rails so I can attach hardware for bungee cords, straps, and 2-by-4s straight across to keep large 5-gallon-plus container plants from rolling and tipping over.
Spot that little toilet there? In moments of greatest need, elegance is not my priority.
Mike also gave me an extra step on the hitch which is truly a step-aerobics workout!
Which brings me back to our weekend nursery trip, the first of many in my new van.
I warned AP she’d be using some long-dormant muscles just to climb in and out of the cab (so unladylike) and up into the back. And sure enough, by the end our first day she was definitely sore. “I need a drink,” she tells me. LMAO! So we found a bar and relaxed.
With this van, all our old road trip rules still apply. AP gets half the space for her purchases, I get half for mine. Only now, it’s less likely that one of us will have to pay rent to use the other one’s space. (Did I say I love love love this van?)
Our final stop on this trip was one of our favorites, Annie’s Annuals & Perennials.
Next door to Annie’s is Terra Outdoor Living’s warehouse where we buy all our outdoor teak furniture sets and fabulous cushions.
I told AP I wanted to stop there either before or after Annie’s to see if they had something I couldn’t resist and could actually buy now that I’ve got my own “better-than-U-Haul” roomy van.
She said, “I need a break from nursery shopping. Let’s do Terra’s first.” (I know Readers, I too was shocked! Must have been all that aerobic stepping taking a toll.) So we rolled into Terra’s and went looking for “a find.”
And well, OMG, I found one…
I immediately sent off a pic of this adorable teak swing to Mike. He texted right back: “buy.”
Since my motto is never pay full price for big ticket items, I bargained the price down. But before I handed my credit card over, I asked the sales guy if the swing would fit in my van and I gave him interior dimensions.
“Yeah,” he said. “The whole thing will fit as is.”
But when we got it out to the van, you guessed it—It didn’t fit as is. The van door header is lower than the van ceiling.
As he and I begin figuring out what to do about this, right then AP decides she is now ready for nursery shopping and heads off to Annie’s, leaving me to deal with my oversized “find.”
First, the guy removes the whole top. But still we can’t get it in. So he takes off the bottom crossbar which suddenly breaks. So I lose more precious Annie’s time as he searches the warehouse for a replacement crossbar. Luckily he finds one, but even with the top off and the crossbar removed, the swing still will not fit.
All the while I’m thinking how AP is over there waltzing around at Annie’s without me to supervise, and I wished this dude would hurry up and figure this swing out before I have to call Mike for his debatable advice!
An hour and a half has now gone by and of course I’m sweating from helping lift the thing up and down multiple times. Finally we get it in by taking the A-frame off one side and doing some fancy maneuvering.
Right then my phone rings. AP is wondering where I am and do I want her to wait for me before she finishes her shopping. I tell her no—which is shocking, Dear Readers, because I love Annie’s. But I love my new swing too, and now that the damn thing’s in the van, I want to strap it down so it makes the trip home safely.
Besides I was in no mood to drip sweat all over Annie’s annuals and perennials.
“Okay,” she says. “Hurry up and bring the van over so I can put my new purchases in.”
Grrrrr.
When we arrived back home to my place, wouldn’t you know it, Mike comes out to help us unload. I thought, “crap!” For obvious reasons I prefer to unload when he’s not around. But I did need help with the swing, and AP had deserted me once already on that.
Here’s what it looked like before unloading…
Looks like we had fun, huh?! WE DID!!! And with room to spare. (Here you can see a bit of that extra aerobics step at the bottom.)
Unloading all that loot went on and on as I handed plant after plant and beautiful item after beautiful item to AP and Mike to set on the ground.
…my stuff behind, AP’s in front…
The next day, it took Mike 3 hours to put that swing together—which included a trip to Home Depot of course. I don’t need to bore you with the details, but OMG why can’t anything go smoothly?
Anyway, here’s my new swing in the garden. So perfect! Thank you, van.
And in another part of the garden, my other well-loved swings (one is partially hidden on the back, right).
Planning this trip was like all trips—AP and I mapped out the nurseries we wanted to visit which included popping onto their websites to check them out for “fabulous” so that we don’t waste our time on “ho-hum.”
When we see beauty on the websites we get all excited! Even if we don’t see beauty, with nursery names like Nursery Beautiful Plants or God’s Little Acre we get all excited anyway. I know…we’re hopeless.
While driving to Nursery Beautiful Plants, I said to AP, “Watch…just because it has a great name it will be crappy.”
Let’s just say this place was more wholesale-like. No creative displays, no method to its layout, nothing was priced. The owner asked what we were looking for and when I said “prices” he said something like “depends on what and how many.”
Lordy have mercy. I can’t shop like that!
But he did have these Lemon Cypresses—which are not always easy to find…
Cupressus macrocarpa ‘Goldcrest Wilma’ (Lemon Cypress or Goldcrest Tree)
They were in so-called one-gallon containers, and I bought 6 for $60. So, not bad.
At home I potted them up into 2-gallons and will sit on them until they go into a beautiful design for someone.
On the way to this next nursery I said to AP, “Watch, it will be some religious cult selling pot plants and other items to blow our minds.”
Well, it didn’t even look worth a strenuous climb out of the cab. So we did a drive-by, LOL!!
Just not what its name had us hoping for. Apparently though, it’s a great place to check out if you’re looking for a large variety of healthy fruit trees.
So buyer beware: nursery names can turn out to be irrelevant. But AP and I are diehard plant romantics and hope always wins!
You’ve read here before that I do driving duty and other jobs on our trips, but AP has just ONE JOB—to navigate.
I wish I could video her unique navigating techniques to show you, because she’s hilarious. She’s either dropping her iPhone or can’t find it; dropping her iPad or can’t find it; flinging her pen accidently in the air where it lands in the most difficult place to find and get it out of. All this while spouting off directions for me to our next stop.
Well…directions per se. Because she often lacks “left” or “right” when she says, “Turn now. HERE!” Her finger generally points in the wrong direction, too. And do you know how many exits we have passed over the years?! Then she has to recalculate to try and get us back on track. Which is a difficult thing when you don’t know where you are or how you got here and now somehow your mobile device suddenly seems to have switched to a foreign language.
If I didn’t love AP so much, I’d use this on her…
One day on this trip, we just wanted to find a place for lunch. I told her “Mexican food.” So she gets on her phone and finds a restaurant with 5 stars and taps “Directions.” So far so good (miracle!).
Then that damn woman—I mean the GPS woman, not AP—starts directing us to go here, now there, turn, proceed, stay to the right, now the left, proceed some more and turn again. I think she took us across the same overpass 4 times!
Then we seemed to circle (both directions) around a huge area filled with warehouses and business parks where no 5-star restaurant would ever be.
After that it seemed she was returning us to the exact spot we started out from, when suddenly she says, “You have arrived at your destination.” I slammed on the brakes in frustration, hoping the porta-potty in the back hadn’t sloshed over.
AP and I looked at each other then out the windows. All we could see were empty fields, except for a bunch of cars parked every which way near a big tree. Then we saw it…
A 5-star taco truck in the middle of nowhere!
(I am literally about to pee my pants telling this. Hilarious!!)
That day, I had one of the best damn 5-star burritos I’ve ever eaten.
Between AP and the GPS lady, I’m never sure where I’m driving us. But somehow in our crazy search for good plants and good food, we mostly do get to where we’re going!
And here’s someplace you’ll want to go…
The El Dorado County Master Gardeners is holding its annual plant sale on Saturday, April 30th from 8-2 at the Sherwood Demonstration Garden (SDG) located at 6699 Campus Drive, Placerville, California. Our plant sales help fund the SDG.
I am in charge of the Perennial Booth, so stop by and say hi!
All ornamentals—trees, shrubs, perennials, succulents and natives—will be on sale, but no, you cannot borrow my new van.
I apologize for not advertising our veggie sale held on April 16. It was a huge success. As far as we could tell, all veggies were placed in good homes.
