Albert's Greenhouse

Another weekend, another plant sale. This time, in Strybing Arboretum/San Francisco Botanical Garden.

They have a sale almost every month, but this was the big yearly one - tables and tables of stuff that is supposed to grow well up in the foggy confines of the city, and which will no doubt burn to a crisp down south where I live.

There's a very active rock garden society up in the city that goes to a lot of sales, and they always have some interesting cold loving plants which I buy and try to keep from melting. I picked up another Raoulia to go with the one I got last fall. Raoulias are these little mat-forming groundcovers. The individual plants in the mat can be fascinatingly small, and have fascinatingly small flowers. Mostly, it's a textural thing.

I also got an odd little euphorbia ( well - there's basically three sorts of euphorbia - small and odd, medium and odd and huge and odd ), and a small ( and especially cheap) Kerria japonica.

Somehow, these days I am only able to make it to these sales in the final, closing hours. Not the best for getting the most desired plant of the year, but there is always something interesting. The arboretum, which I had last visited a couple of months ago for the magnolias, is in full bloom for the spring - and we're finally getting some really sunny summer weather. It seems like everything is in bloom and sprouting in these few days of spring.