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The Garden Party

Sunday outing - having fun and doing good

15 years ago

As many years as I have lived here and as frequently as we have visited the Botanical Gardens in Fort Bragg, never has the weather been favorable to go to the coast to see the Rhododendron blooming. It is a rough 15 miles over the hill to get to the coast.

Anyway, this year weather is permitting and we are able to get into the Botanical Gardens for free, provided we bring a donation for the Food-Bank.

So Joann, Ron and I will bring some goodies and will pick up some picnic food for us at a nice store in Fort Bragg and spend time admiring the huge collection of Rhodies.

The Food Bank always gives out the usual staples, so we decided to donate something of a "Treat", it has to be simple and not need too many added ingredients. My share will be Zatarain's (sp) Rice and Red Beans and Rice and Black beans.

Check out the Gardens (link provided) particularly the "What's Blooming" section.

Here is a link that might be useful: Botanical Gardens

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Comments (4)

mwoods
15 years ago
That is one beautiful place. It would be hard to decide which of all those gardens I'd like the most. The woodland garden is just gorgeous and the picture on the opening page is amazing..would love to see that. So are you going today,or another time? Sounds like a perfect day out Lilo.
lilod
Original Author
15 years ago
Tomorrow is the day for the Gardens. Even though it's a bit of a trip - actually about 35 miles all together, it's a spectacular ride by itself and any visitors who have enough time to spend a day will be taken to the Coast and the Gardens, if they so wish - most do.
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In my new home, I have a housekeeper come every other week. I like clean homes. I do NOT like the actual job of cleaning them. I'd rather work in the garden, or do some cooking, or deal with the chickens, or keep up with physical maintenance and house painting/staining, or do graphic arts or anything else. I'm fine with doing laundry, too. I clean up after myself in the kitchen, but the housekeeper does floors, bathrooms and general dusting/windows and such. And I now have a robot vacuum who is pretty decent at what he does. He even has a name: Sharkey. I'm not crazy about cleaning his filter, but it comes with the territory and lasts five minutes... I didn't have a housekeeper back at my old CT home. One reason my getting out of there and getting the place on the market is taking so long... especially since I then had a full time job that lasted well over the standard 40 hour work week. THIS one will be clean! But it doesn't need to be anally-House Beautiful clean. Simply lived in and tidy. My reasons for not wanting a fully white kitchen or other rooms are not about appearing clean, but about my just only wanting white as an accent. Aesthetically. That's what works for my sense of eye appeal.
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lilod
Original Author
15 years ago
Just came back from the Coast, where it was foggy and overcast and felt downright good after the 100Âº+ temps we have been having.
The Rhododendrons are breath-taking, the many colors and varieties creating fantastic vistas from every path. Joann took a lot of pictures, we hope to be able to have enough good ones to post.
The food-bank got a lot of food, a very nice selection.
For our lunch purchased items at the Harvest Market, they have a truly large selection of food to take out, from salad to deli items to hot dishes, so we had a gourmet picnic.
I brought some sushi and some excellent cheese home for tomorrow.
We ran into a friend not seen for a long time, since she moved to the coast and we met up with a woman from our town who walked a little terrier, turned out to be a cousin of
Taschis.
A very nice day indeed. Came home to 90Âº, turned the cooler on, stripped the warm clothing off, put cool clothing on, fed dogs, cats, chickens and goats, watered what needed water and now I can coast.
sheila
15 years ago
I've visited that place many times. When I lived in Marin I often drove up to visit friends in Point Arena and went on up to stay in Mendocino and visit Fort Bragg. Amazing Rhodys. We've had our Rhody Festival here in Port Townsend this weekend. It begins with dog parade on Thursday, Friday afternoon is the kiddie parage and then in the evening the Bed Races. The Rhody Parade on Saturday and ended with the Rhody run today.

It's all a lot of fun...in fact we have a little fun fair on Memorial Field during all of this.

Hot for us too - 90 yesterday but we do get cool sea breezes. It'll rain again soon.

Your weekend sounds great:)

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