Heathcote Botanical Gardens Sale

Anticipation has been building for a few weeks for this event. The one I attended back in Nov 07 was my first real plant sale as a new plant guy. This sale is were most of my first plants and palms came from. Sat. came and Aaron from AYiFtP , his mom, and myself got up early so we could go to breakfast before the plant sale opened. My fiancee, Monique is going for her Masters and had to go to school instead of being able to go. So we made it to breakfast and the diner messed my order up, by the time I got it,ate it, and paid for it was time for the sale to open. We take off and as I am turning on the road the plant sale is on, an undercover policeman pulled me over and said I was doing 58 in a 40. B.S. I have a 89 ford p.o.s. truck with no overdrive. The truck at 50 sounds like the motor is going to jump out of the engine compartment. I tell the man this and he says I will be right back. Mined you the whole time I am staring at the entrance to the plant sale. 15 minutes later he comes back with a $190 speeding ticket for every bit of 58mhp. So far this Sat. has not started well. Waking up at 7:30 to finally make it inside at 9:30.

The plant vendors had a very nice selection this year. It seems like I had at least 15 minute conversation with each one of them about their plants. This being a 2 day event and my 4 different trips up to it I think I have made several new friends. I have lots and lots of new stuff to show off, way to much for 1 post. I think between Monique and myself we spent $300 and that is not counting that dang $190 before the sale started. But I am figuring these things out. Day 1 early for all the rare cool stuff that there is only a few of. Day 2 late clearance so they do not have to bring them back home. Sunday was the score day. But we will get to that later. Heathcote Botanical Gardens has just taken on a 13 year 74 acre expansion. This is going to be unbelievable when it is all done. So Aaron and myself are going to get involved. We talked with 1 lady about our Master Gardener Program from the University of Florida which we are going to sign up for and this will begin in Jan 09. We also signed up with Heathcote as volunteers for gardening and helping with events. So when we have any new info on these exciting adventures we are taking on I will post about them.