Posts tagged ‘Tweet-up’

Apr 2

Heaven = Wine Country & Gardens

This past weekend we visited the San Francisco area for the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show and to visit Sonoma. The first series of pictures were taken at the show. If you missed it this year then you should really check it out next year. It’s full of garden ideas, inspiration, shopping, seminars and shopping. Oh wait, I already said shopping…

Lately, I’ve been feeling like I need to add more art & sculptures to my garden. I’m missing the small details. That’s why most of my pictures are of items that inspired me and should help me pick affordable art to add to my garden. The second set of pictures were taken at Cornerstone right outside of Sonoma. It’s a beautiful shopping area full of art and display gardens. It’s a must see when visiting Sonoma.

The last set of pictures are of wine tasting at Ravenswood and Chateau St. Jean wineries. We also walked up & down Lombard Street in San Francisco. Just because it was there.

: Japanese Quince bonsai

: Copper owl watching guard

: Copper Armadillo BBQ

: Beautiful wood bench

: Aeoniums

: Celtic Lily water feature

: Stone fragments used for walkway

: Tropical garden

: Artistic balls on show lawn

: Ancient looking Olive tree

: Elephant’s Foot Palm (funny)

: Agave

: Little faces in the Habitat Dance with a Red-Headed Snake garden

: Stone Basins

: Fish reflection

: Koi

: New Orleans Pond with alligators and succulents

: The Living Room (living walls)

: THE chair at Cornerstone

: Metal fencing

: Water feature

: Succulents

: Cement paver made to look like wood

: Water Basin

: Giant Pot

: Mermaid

: Stone filled with succulents

: Our future bathtub

: Driftwood coffee table

: Metal gate filled with flowing water

: Succulents planted with stone pillars

: Garden Sculptures

: Alley leading to large round stone

: Garden art

: Garden from galvanized tunnel

: Alley of trees

: Compost fence

: Woven wood fence

: Agave, Rosemary & a large stone

: Travis

: Cornerstone garden sculptures

: Barn in Cornerstone’s gardens

: Work of art

: Pas de vins poules mouillees

: Chateau St. Jean Garden

: Drinking a bottle of Pino at Chateau St. Jean

: Chateau St. Jean Palm tree

: Bocce Ball at Chateau St. Jean

: Travis & I looking down Lombard Street

: Lombard Street

While we were in town we also visited with a lot of great folks I met online through Twitter.

Jan 5

Elisabeth C. Miller Hort. Library

I continue to be amazed with the number of FREE gardening resources available to the public. Just this past weekend I found out about the Elisabeth C. Miller Horticulture Library in Seattle, the Garden Answers Knowledgebase AND the Plant Answer Line — all FREE to the public.

Aside from having to actually visit the library to borrow books, the other two resources are available online for everyone. Simply visit the library’s Web site and select your desired link:

http://depts.washington.edu/hortlib/index.shtml

If you’re on the road, you can even call the Plant Answer Line at (206) UW-PLANT. Just keep in mind, the folks manning the Plant Answer Line live in the Pacific Northwest (zones 7b – 8b).

If anyone local is interested in joining me, I’d like to make a trip to the library in the next couple weeks. I’m on a mission to find good garden reference books and can’t imagine a better place to do research.

I found these three wonderful resources from watching a Gardening with Ciscoe episode (a local Seattle gardening show) that originally aired on August 15, 2009; click here to see the show details.

Sep 17

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Northern California Garden Tour

This past weekend I took a little road trip to Northern California to meet some great folks I met on Twitter. This may sound strange to some of you, but it seemed perfectly normal to me.

Our total trip was from Wednesday night to Monday night; driving time was a little over 11 hours each way. We arrived at Carri’s home in Sacramento Thursday night — just in time for the first tweet-up with Katie and Kristi. It was great chatting face to face. Carri and her family were fantastic hosts and took us to many sites around Northern California during our three day visit.

It all started Friday with two garden tours and a Filoli tweet-up.

We started the day in Laura’s garden and ended it there under the red umbrella – drinking limoncello.

Click here to see Laura’s garden slideshow; click here for the thumbnails.

Rebecca’s garden was our second garden tour that morning.

Click here to see Rebecca’s garden slideshow; click here for thumbnails.

Laura, Rebecca, Carri, and I then met Chuck at Filoli (Fight, Love, Live) gardens.

Click here to see Filoli garden slideshow; click here for thumbnails.

Saturday morning we hung around Carri’s home and garden. We even got to see the plans for her new front yard!

For lunch we headed to Napa Valley to check out the wineries and do a little vino tasting.

Click here to see the Napa picture slideshow; click here for thumbnails.

Sunday morning I headed home. We took the long way through San Francisco so we could check out some of the sites.

Click here to see our San Francisco and Muir Redwood picture slideshow; click here for thumbnails.

We stayed Sunday night in Ashland, Oregon and pulled into our driveway Monday afternoon around 5:30 p.m.

It was a great trip – next time we fly.