Terry's account:

Thursday July 5th

Woke up to silence - the fireworks have all gone. Breakfasted on cereal and fruit, fresh fruit that is - left over cherries, watermelon and strawberries.

These next two days are for visiting a couple of nurseries and resting. We, that's me, have to check out the local garden centres and maybe find one or two of our delphiniums and Janice has to do a little (Ha!) shopping. Well, Janice got started first and cruised the shops while I did the blog. After lunch we visit LaConnor. LaConnor is a tourist town, cum wee port. Most of the buildings are classy and those that aren't are expensive anyway. The real reason for the visit however, is to see the quilt museum. This is a grand affair, housed in an old mansion which has, of course, been restored after being ravaged by fire some time before we arrived (early 1900s I think). This is a "well worth the journey" visit and there are some magnificient quilts on display. Stephen says all the right things about Janice's quilts being even better than those displayed and I offer my usual grunts of praise and agreement.

Next to Christianson's Garden Centre. This is an upmarket garden centre that we'd visited three years ago. On that visit they had given us the name of Valleybrook Nurseries as being a great supplier. We subsequently visited Valleybrook and they have become a good customer. It was therefore great to see that Christianson's were displaying our delph, from Valleybrook, this time. We are finding that our delph are indeed becoming established in garden centres in the USA. I also found some "Double Innocence" in another store in town.

This evening we are treated to the company of Barb's mum, Willa and Willa's grandaughter Stephanie, also, Skip and Jean, Stephen and Barb's good friends. It was a great evening and Barb, who had worked 10 hours that day also cooked a wonderful meal. I should tell you that Barb's artichoke and parmesan dip is worth killing for.

Friday July 6th
The essentials today are visiting Skagit gardens and shopping. Guess who did which? Janice managed 7 hours, 13 minutes and twenty three seconds of shopping the Outlet Stores. I managed an hour or so at Skagit Gardens and picked up a catalogue illustrating our delph. Cool! The rest of the day was spent relaxing and helping Stephen watering newly planted trees that had been expressing some displeasure at being left in the hot sun for a few days shortly after being transplanted. We sorted that and they were duly appreciative. The evening was spent at a chinese restaurant with S and B and their old neighbour, Jean. There was great trauma at dinner - twice. Firstly I ordered a double whisky. Now, in NZ, one orders a double whiskey because the half full thimble sized single wouldn't whet the whistle of an adolescent, dwarf mouse. Not so, aparently in the USA. The double I received came in a tumbler three quarters the size of the Empire State Building - and was three quarters full!!!!! Ok I thought, I'll take it slowly... The next trauma was the chilli found in the vegetable and rice dish. This was no ordinary chilli. This one was raised in the back streets of Mexico and fed double whiskys and horseradish, grown for 29 years and dried. It was the hottest chilli I've tasted by a factor of about 3000 and I swallowed the whole lot before I could stop. I'm not looking forward to the sequel.

Ok. I'm a slow typist and we're on Internet Cafe time so on to today.

Saturday July 7th
Spent the morning in the garden with Stephen and then Stephen completed his "best friend in the whole USA" deal by driving Janice and I to Vancouver. The border crossing was a little more exciting than usual for him as he had two foreigners for company and had to jump through the same hoops we did but apart from that the journey was eventless.
The whole week with Stephen and the few days with both Stephen and Bard have been fantastic and represent a considerable debt to be repaid. We are hopeful that they will bring Skip and Jean over to NZ and allow us the priveledge of returning this hospitality. You guys were simply fantastic! Thanks a million for getting our trip off to a wonderful start. See you soon. Please. You only need the air fare.

Onward to Vancouver

Another picture for Aimee - this one is taken on Stephen and Barb's stone wall that was mentioned in a previous post. You can see Stephen's truck in the background. This was taken just as we were saying goodbye to Barb, and leaving for the trip to Vancouver.

Mount Vernon

(Janice here - I've sent terry on an errand so i can have some time on MY blog): Well, it was hard to get much time to blog over the last couple of days... I spent a good deal of the time shopping, well, someone has to do it and terry and stephen had nurseries to visit so it was up to me. I spent Thursday morning at Mt Vernon shopping centre where there is a food co-op that sells a lot of health foods and I was able to get some good rice based snacks and some sulphur free wine. That afternoon Stephen took Terry and I to the La Conner Quilt Museum. What an interesting place, an old house with three floors of quilts, the lower one was antique quilts and the upper two were exhibits by two modern quilters. That night Skip, Jean, Willa and Stephanie came to dinner and we had a lovely evening - great conversation and great food.

And on Friday, while the boys gardened and slept, I did the local Outlet Mall - had a fabulous day buying shoes (sketcher sandals), quilt material and clothes (two shirts, one reebok hoodie, 2 pr jammies, undies). The boys called in at lunchtime, bought me lunch and left again as i hadn't finished. when I had finished they picked me up and took me to Joanns ( the local equivalent of spotlight) and they just happened tohave quilt tools on sale at half price - another big spend (purple fiskars snips and purple fiskars rotary cutter)! I have a picture of the fabric i've bought so far this trip - caution, drool alert! That night we all went with Stephen and Barb's friend Jean to a chinese restaurant for dinner where Terry was served with a full five fingers of scotch whiskey! he made no attempt to drink it all. We think that when he said no ice they were so used to filling the glass with ice in it they just went ahead and filled the glass without ice!

the first picture of the two of us is for Aimee who was worried that grumps was lonely when she saw a photo of him on his own. It was taken on Monday evening in Cottage Grove when we were looking around this lovely old town with Alice but this is the first chance we've had to upload pictures since then. The second 'quilty' picture next to my fabric stash is of the quilt shop in Sisters.

A Thousand Miles

Monday 2nd July

We have a lot to do today but hey, why hurry? Waking up to a view of large barges making their way up the Colombia river (second largest in the USA) and a house empty of our hosts Mike and Mary, we eat, pack and set off for Blooming Nursery, about an hour south west of Portland.

The weather is warm and sunny and the cherries ($1.95 lb) and nectarines sweet and juicy. The instructions for finding the nursery are on the pda which is dammed hard to read in the bright light but we make it to Blooming after having to ask the locals directions - fewer than 10 times. Blooming is a reasonable sized nursery employing 70 staff - in the slow season. This grows to almost 100 when things get busy. Nohemi, the really cheerful production manager is delighted to see us and we embark on a tour of the place. We don't actually see all of the 47 acres but what we do see is impressive. Blooming is a perennial plant nursery and has a vast area of weedless, beautifully laid out stock plant beds that just happened to be flowering. It looked magnificient!
I speak with the propagation manager about .... stuff..... and admire the greenhouses which are definitely SOTA. All houses have concrete floors and some have flood watering systems that deliver heated water and nutrients to plants in pots and trays - without having to water from above. Everything is automated.
I seem to remember getting stuck in present tense Micky Spillane type writing last time we went away - must be something to do with travel. I digress.
We meet with the owner, Grace and leave with the impression that these people love our delphiniums and are keen to promote them more. They're already a good customer and the visit was very good for building on this blah di blah di blah, ra, ra. Blooming is a very good operation.

Ok, can't hang around. Off we go, south down the Willamatte valley to the tiny town of Cottage Grove - about a four hour drive. Lunch is nice, the cherries still sweet and juicy and the weather getting hotter. We arrive at Territorial Seeds at 4:30 pm and meet Josh, the manager there. Immediately there is a bonus - we find some seed sieves that we can't get in NZ. Territorial want to add our delph to their catalogue, that's ok by me.

The real purpose of venturing this far south is to visit Alice Doyle of Log House Plants. She organised the meeting with Territorial and greeted us with a hug. Alice, a lifelong hippie, is a great plants person and runs a nursery that sells throughout the pacific north west. She is a great marketer too and really knows how to move her plants. Alice greeted us like a long lost friend and her hospitality was fantastic. If you're reading this Alice, thanks, you did us proud!

That night we stayed at a resort hotel specialising, of course, in gardens, and arranged for us, of course, by Alice.

Tuesday 3rd July

I'll keep this one short. Ha! Mmm, these cherries are nice but sure make the keyboard sticky.

Breakfast and a meeting with Cindy, the head gardener. Cindy is responsible for developing the resort garden into a place that will attract droves of garden fanatics for conferences and starry-eyed, well-heeled couples for weddings. Needless to say, this garden needs our delphiniums. So may the other dozen or so hotels in the chain. Cindy does a great job. Her budget is....unlimited. I'd like one of those!
Stephen and I enjoy a two hour tour of the garden with Cindy in the sun. Janice checks the email in the shade.
Off to Loghouse Plants at 11 am and another tour. As I said, the reception at Loghouse was terrific. Alice's niece, Anna, married to Marcos (the Greek) is a sculptor. Before showing us her current work in progress she prepares a most delicious Greek lunch. This is seriously nice. We then went over to her studio to see her work. This is seriously good. Very good. It's unfinished. I'm allowed a photograph. I'm lucky, as usual. Anna trained at the top classic sculpting school in Italy. Is a very good a sculptor, no?
Tour of Loghouse Plants. 2,100 plant varieties. 26 greenhouses. Hot day.
Alice tells us we must visit Iron Mountain and Sisters on the way back. Iron mountain has alpine meadows. Sisters has quilts. We say goodbye at 4:30 pm.

The drive to Iron Mountain takes a couple of hours or so and we decide to go straight to Sisters, on the east side of the Cascade mountain range. We drive the long way as the mountain pass is closed. Night in Motel.

Wednesday July 4th (something significant with that date, can't remember what)
Stephen and I set off for Iron Mountain to see plants. Janice stays in town to see quilts. The alpine meadows are breathtaking and we see fields of wild delphiniums with masses of other stuff too. We take lots of photographs and spend nothing. We return to Sisters at 11 am. Janice says the quilts are great, the town teriffic, takes a few photographs and spends ...something. We set off for Mt Vernon and Stephen's wife Barb. The cherries are sweet and juicy and it's now 91DegF. I drive. We survive. Eight hours later we arrive.
Another great welcome from Barb in a lovely new house with a garden created by the two of them and a low wall of rocks hauled from miles away after being carted across a stream the width of the Whanganui river. We have steak, a wonderful artichoke dip, long peppers and the cherries were sweet and juicy. Stephen has driven us over 1000 miles in three days and been just great. Barb has welcomed and fed us fantastic. This is wonderful hospitality. And then, the knockout blow! The whole town put on a huge display of fireworks for us, about 3 hours worth. I thought this a bit over the top not realising how many folk Stephen had told about our visit. What a wonderful welcome.

Wednesday 5th July

Write a blog without spell check or pictures.

Portland

Ok, Janice has done the images so I'm on the text.

Saturday June 30th

Left wet Wanganui after a great send off from R and J

The flight from Auckland to San Francisco was fantastic. From the moment we took off to the moment we landed we didn't touch the ground at all, the seats were comfortable, the food was good and we both managed several hours sleep. We made up lost time so we made our connection. The big surprise however, was still to come. San Francisco customs officials were smiling, helpful and happy and the transfer through customs to the flight to Portland took about 20 minutes all up, including walk time. We actually felt welcomed into the USA.

Stephen Murphy drove a couple of hunders miles south to pick us up and deliver us to his sister and brother-in-law's place not far from the airport on the banks of the Colombia river. We ate, talked and went to bed.

Sunday July 1

Up around 8 and spent the morning touring the lower reaches of the Colombia river looking for wild delphiniums. Didn't see any, but did find several lovely waterfalls. I got some great photos of these and even remembered to load the memory card into the camera first. What a clear mind. I must travel more often. In the afternoon Stephen took us to see Ft Vancouver (in Washington state just over the river from Portland, Oregon) where he used to do volunteer gardening work. There was a blacksmith and a baker demonstrating old skills and a really chatty, well informed guide showed us around what was the head man's house. Ft Vancouver was owned by the Hudson Bay Company and used as a trading post/store preparitory to shipping beaver furs back to the "old country". Sadly, all buildings are reconstructions as the originals were burned down in a fire some time before we arrived - but they looked and felt the part. We even found a couple of long drops, but refrained! If you look at the photos you will see three fold away beds from the 1840s - nothing new in the world eh!

Then to the most exciting bit........shopping! We bought a few electronic bits and pieces ( I got a 1gig CF camera card for $25 and Janice a 1 gig SD card even cheaper. Then to Powell's book store in Portland. This is the "must visit" and well worth the journey. Second hand books are sold alongside new ones and it's set out by subject matter, rather like a library. We used a few dollars here too.

Our hosts, Mike and Mary Marquande, have been wonderful and Stephen, our chaufer and guide, his usual bouyant self. We're having fun.

Monday July 2nd

Rose at 5:30. I went for a jog and Janice did some resting for me. Today we go visiting nurseries and drive down past Eugene to Cottage Grove to meet more growers and a seed company. More later.

Cheers

Terry