Alastair and Sophie had a long weekend with Labor Day on Monday. The main intention was to make some headway on redeveloping their nice little yard. We'd already done quite a bit of planning together on the planting requirements - a vege box, some herbs, a couple of feijoas, and a number of flowering and scented plants.
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| The "before" shot |
We started off at a local nursery to see their range. Prices are high by New Zealand standards, but so are the plant sizes. Where NZ would have many plants in 4-6" containers, here they are sold in mainly 9-12" pots with matching larger prices. There's a good range of New Zealand plants with flax, cabbage trees, pittosporum and NZ grasses. With Ali and Sophie we made a note of some preferred options, then headed to Home Depot.
Home Depot is a giant store with great high shelves and a somewhat restricted range of products - a little Pak-n-Save-like. By the time we had chosen a few specimens it was time to visit Rens, Ines and little Cosimo, relatives by marriage to a nephew, who we had met in Cortona last year and again at Xmas in NZ.
They live in Mill Valley, in Marin County to the north of San Francisco. We had a lovely time with them, meeting Cosimo's godfather too. We walked down into the Mill Valley township where we had a very nice lunch together, followed by a walk back and through a rather neighbourhood park close to their home. Amazing groves of cedars where the giant mother tree had died out leaving a very large ring of smaller, though now already huge, cedar trees.
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| A circular grove - large enough for few tables to fit inside |
After Mill Valley we went back to the plant stores to load up for planting tomorrow...
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