When it's snowy outside and you're longing for spring, what do you do?
Why, of course you grab a friend and run to the Flower and Garden Show, of course!
Which is how I found myself inhaling the perfume of violets and daphne and hyacinth yesterday with Jane Shasky, the wonderful watercolor artist.
I have a favorite nursery, where I've bought hundreds of plants over the years... Christianson's Nursery. They always have the most lovely garden in the show and took home the gold medal again this year. It is easy to see why.
John Christianson always has a wealth of ideas anyone could appropriate...
plants, display and growing methods and hardscape plans we can tweak and bring home to our own gardens.
I want a cold frame like this! Perhaps we'll alter our shoddy old greenhouse...
Maybe find a bike and rust it a bit, train a wee curling vine up the spokes...
And oh, for a sweet gate like this one!
and stone pavers for a planter or step, tucked about with English daisies and mosses.
Or a water element, even a horse trough. Hmm.
The garden show is the best place to overhear snatches of conversation...
"... So I told him I am not going to have those garbage cans showing at the street this year. I am definitely planting my sweet peas right beside the garage!"
and, "I just couldn't pass by that hellebore and they actually had those pinkish trilliums!"
Jane and I went determined to conserve our nickels but we went home with a few choice flowers and packets of seeds, hoping ahead for the springtime that is surely just around the corner.
Never mind the snow!
