Ciao all-
Pistil, thanks for the info re: salvias and such. I know about Sequim. I lived in Seattle (Queen Anne) for 9 years before moving to Toronto. Mom's in California (Paradise near Chico) so I'm a native West Coaster and thrilled to be back! The time zone alone is worth relocating for. I could never get used to sports being televised so late and having to wait forever for political returns, ugh.
James, we have 4 children, all with paws and claws so we had to fly here. We were able to find a pack-it-yourself moving company so all of our stuff arrived after we did. We hoteled it for a week while looking for housing and work. Fortunately, we arrived just as students were ending their term so housing was easier to find than we might have found otherwise. For whatever stupid reason, housing is almost a crisis here on the island and even worse for people with fur children. There's a massive movement happening right now to rectify that and make it illegal for homeowners to discriminate against renters with pets. I'm really hoping that moves forward as quite a few people are opting for homelessness rather than surrendering their pets.
We're starting over entirely with a brand new climate. I was able to bring my seed collection but no plants and sadly, our grow-op lighting set-up did not make the trip nor did my husband's bbq. It's ok, don't be overly sad for us. Lots of stuff did make it and it's actually a good thing short-term that we didn't bring all of the soaker hoses or the vast collection of stakes and pots. We don't have garage access right now so we'd have to rent a storage unit for all of it. We had a massive garage sale before we left and got hundreds of dollars for the garden stuff because it was spring and lots of people needed it. The kids at our community garden bought a lot of it so I know it's going to good use.
I do have a portable greenhouse, the kind with a plastic cover and zippered doorway and metal frame with 12 shelves so I can start some things early. There's no room inside for a grow-op, at least I haven't figured out how/where we might rig one up. Peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes do fairly crappy here. We had 3 cherry tomato plants, but they did not reach their full potential, at least by Toronto standards. I just need to figure out the "new normal".
