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| Homestead Gardens |
We had three full days of plant shopping in Lancaster County this weekend, and came home yesterday with cars packed full of plants, shrubs, roses, benches, chocolate, bacon, pretzels, mulch, soil, and more. This is the most fun weekend ever for us, running around to our favorite garden places in beautiful Lancaster County, buying and talking about plants and our gardens all weekend, and just being together. We mostly go to local farms and greenhouses, and a few larger garden centers where we can get more specialty items. Some of the places we go to are Spooky Nook Greenhouse, Leacock Flowers, Wenger's Greenhouse, Homestead Gardens, South Maple Greenhouse, Ken's, Espenshades, and a new place this year (for us), Newswangers. We talk a lot about which we like best, and I think we all agree Homestead and South Maple are our favorites. We love the cookies Rachel makes at South Maple, and this year when she saw that we were so hot and thirsty, she went into her house and brought out glasses and a jug of cold water for us. So nice! Each place is a little different, and we buy plants at all of them. We have been buying our plants in Lancaster County since 2005 when Evie first started telling us about all the great places we should be going to!
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| Hanging plants at Homestead |
On Saturday we passed by a chicken barbecue on the road, so we stopped and picked up barbecued chicken and grilled potatoes and had a picnic lunch by a nearby stream, looking over the Amish farmland. We made our usual stops in Lititz for Wilbur Chocolates, and at Weavers, where we get bacon and other delicious food items. Evie and Earl's oldest granddaughter got married on Saturday, so we were able to see them all dressed up, and they came over and told us all about the wedding after they got home on Saturday night.
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| We loved this plant--some kind of papyrus |
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| Homestead |
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| Wenger's |
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| Wenger's |
When our cars get too full, we stop back at the farm and we each put our plants in a section of the barn.
We have a routine for our meals at the farm, we have ham and cheese sandwiches on Friday night, along with pepper cabbage and broccoli salad that we pick up at Weavers, and on Saturday night we had a flank steak with salad and radishes (both from Evie's garden) and leftover grilled potatoes from lunch. Breakfast is usually fresh eggs from the farm with bacon, and on Sunday morning we made blueberry pancakes and sausages. Then it was time to start packing our cars, always a challenge as you can imagine. And now it's time to plant all those plants!
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| Plants in the barn |
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| Earl and Evie before the wedding |
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| Packing the cars |
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| Prudy's rosebush had to go in the front seat |
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| Ellen, Judy, Eileen, and Prudy at the farm, 2012 |
What a great tradition. I planted a veggie garden this weekend. Basil, cilantro, tomatoes, peppers and threw in some sweet pea seeds to see if they will grow and climb the fencing that I had to put up to keep the deer out.
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