Plant Sale! - a tale of botanical excitement

Well I just finished attending the U.C. Botanical Garden's Fall plant sale - what an adventure! My faithful followers will recall that in April I posted an account of the Spring sale. This differed in some respects, one being time of year (hence the "Fall" vs. "Spring" titles), and another being time of day - evening for Spring, morning for Fall. We of course arrived for the Member's Preview Sale which began at 9am. An hour before the opening of the gate we took our place in line behind the already gathering grouping of fellow plant-hungry people! The noise level and excitement grew steadily as the crowd consumed cup after cup of free (and quite good) coffee. Remember what I said about the wine at the last sale? As it turns out I was correct and when the sale began people were excitedly lugging about their green treasures with caffeine-fueled energy. I ended up with a rather modest 10 plants, but a couple of these were a bit pricey - Michelia yunnanensis and Paeonia delavayi var. lutea. Anyway there were oodles of lovely Salvias, medicinal Chinese shrubs, pokey Cacti, and California natives, just to mention a few. After grabbing my Hoya kerrii I looked around at the houseplants and saw corpse flowers were being sold! I was tempted, but decided to wait until my greenhouse is set up. I left John at the grass section while I went back and forth gathering more green-leaved photosynthetic delights. At last we paid and made our way outward. I felt a bit overwhelmed at all the commotion of people out there - bringing plants, dropping them off, picking them up, being helped out, wagons and trucks and people crossing the street. But it all worked out and our plants with kind assistance were soon safely in the car and we were on our way! It was a lot of fun, and I now have some quite appealing specimens which I will soon be situating in their new home. But it also wore me out a bit - friends and family know how major (and minor, actually) plant related events can over-stimulate me! And this is only the beginning - Fall has arrived, which means it's time to plant! Further exploits of the upcoming native plant sale and nursery visits will be available here!