All the signs include photographs of the plants in full bloom, so if you go early in the year when there's nothing but foliage, you don't even have to know all the names to pick out good ones.

But the really amazing thing is how beautifully they're packed if you order them by mail. When they arrive at your home, there won't be a single distressed leaf, bud, or bloom. They really have packing down to a science. Edelweiss is the only other nursery that truly astonishes me each time I order something from them. In fact, Annie's and Edelweiss could teach the other mail-order nurseries a master class in packing and shipping.

Y'all have confirmed my decision to place an order with Annie's. Her catalogue arrived a few days ago and I've been drooling over it ever since. She's got some great unusual plants, something beyond pansies and petunias. Speaking of pansies, I've got a flat that never got planted last fall, so those babies need to go in the ground. My grandmother's name was Pansy and she always had pansies, so naturally I have followed suit in her memory.

I sure would love to visit CA in the spring to go nursery hopping with you guys!

You are most welcome to come visit and hop through the nurseries with us, Angie.

Oh we have so much fun, this is what the back of my Yukon usually looks like!
Actually, that's a light load as I usually put that back seat down.

And 3 boxes of plants fit in the second row nicely.

What a lovely and familiar sight. Makes me feel like shopping.

We had frost this morning. It wasn't fair. I had moved all of the tropicals outside because we hadn't had any since November. It's still cold even now at 1:00 in the afternoon.

I know, I had the soft tender new growth on some roses wilt.

Maddening, especially when there's already so much of it. I was thinking it might already be too late to throw epsom salts at the roses because they have so much new growth, and then we inexplicably get frost from nowhere. Silly Yahoo said the low last night was 38. That does not compute. I am glad I didn't buy any impatiens while we were out.

Thanks, Zu, if I ever make it back out to CA, I'll take you up on that kind gesture.

Well, we have an addition to our household: Merlin, who showed up at the door a couple of weeks ago and made himself at home. Literally walked inside and claimed his chair. He's obviously been someone's pet because he's docile and very much a woman's lap cat, so today he goes under the knife. We made efforts to find his owner to no avail and took him earlier this week for his shots and a checkup. Black and white with blue eyes. Now that I have cleared my computer's hard drive of all the photos that had accumulated, I can start taking more to post here. I'll get one of him and put it in the companions thread. He's the smallest of all our cats and we thought he was only about 6 months old, but the vet said he's closer to a year and a half, judging from his teeth.