After a particularly wet winter, spring has arrived and the summer growers are all beginning to leaf out. The rains caused less erosion this year than last, so it seems that the meagre measures at "flood control" that we've managed to put in place have had some effect. Petra has officially opened the nursey for business now and she's busy spiffing things up in preparation for the big CSSA convention in San Diego later this month. The Association has organized a bus tour to local nurseries and our humble establishment is on that list. We hear that a lot of people have already signed up for the tour and she expects that others will want to come out on their own. Oh boy!
An important part of "spiffing things up" was to finally get our entranceway lanterns up and running. We've had these great Arts & Crafts lanterns ready to go for several months now, but just couldn't find the time to do the work, They are now hooked up to both a light sensor and a timer, so they come on when it gets dark, but don't stay on into the wee hours of the morning. We think they add a bit of class to our humble establishment.
Jean was one of our first official customers and here she eagerly shops for plants for her spring planting campaign.
Elsewhere, the organization of the annex shed reached the point where Petra could finally move her hoard of show pots down from Whittier. Slowly but surely everything is coming down to Rainbow.
The surround to the "kinderhaus" is beginning to take shape. Framing, Lexane and shade cloth are all in place on the south and east sides. On the south end here, all that remains to complete the job is building tabletops for the pallet racking. Altogether the surround will add about 1300' sq. of protected space to our small empire.
This is a view of the eastside shade structure. It's been covered with Lexane over its entire length and partially covered with 30% shade cloth. Petra's done it this way for versatility. On this side only two table tops remain to be built. The right side of the aisle is reserved for another 50' of ground beds- whenever we find the time. We've already started work on the northside structure and that should be finished in a couple of weeks.