We’ve dubbed the shop the botanical petri dish at the moment.  If you happened by the shop yesterday you would have seen as many plants on the front sidewalk as were inside.  We had 3 deliveries yesterday and holy cow were they huge.

Travis and I decided to take a bit of an easy morning and work on a few things that needed to get done.  He did estimates and other computer work and I did a thorough go through on our Special Order sheet (I also re-wrote it).  That task always takes a few hours so most of the morning was spent doing that and helping customers.  That meant that I didn’t start in on the deliveries until close to 3:00.

We also had a small visitor yesterday.  A stray dog wandered into our store in the morning.  I had to take some time to find her home.  The good news is that our friends at North End Pet Hospital helped us locate the owner and they graciously kept her there until the owner could come get her.

When I finally got around to the plant material on the sidewalk the customers must have smelled new plants and they all showed up too.  Around 5:00 we were all in agreement that there was no way the plants were all going to get priced let alone put away.  That’s when we kicked it into high gear and started throwing plants wherever they would fit.  We even filled the back of Travis’s truck with flats of plants.  It’s insane.

Today we have to now find all of the plants we stashed, price them and make the shop look somewhat decent.  All of this is very good for our customers.  It means our store is stuffed full of plants for you to choose from.  The top of the list… veggies.  If you are looking at putting in your vegetable garden this weekend we’re the place for you.  There are so many tomato plants it’s ridiculous.  Tomatillos, eggplant and cucumbers are new additions this week.  If you are into flowers there are tons of million bells and petunias in stock.  Travis went a little vine crazy this week too.

I would give you a few photos, but it’s not a pretty picture.  Give me a few hours and I’ll see what I can do.

I didn’t want to leave you without something to read.  Ok, that’s a lie because who really reads this crap anyway.  I’m just trying to fulfill the commitment I made to myself to post every weekday if I can.  I also am doing my best to include photos with every post.  So I browse through the photos on my phone/computer (oh how I love you cloud) and see what comes up.  Today you get a random animal photo.

This is to prove that dogs and cats can live harmoniously, but you knew that already.  Normally people yell at their dogs to tell them to leave the cat alone.  In our house we yell at the cat to leave the dog alone.

Every morning while we have breakfast Hammond, the cat, attacks the dogs feet.  He grabs onto them, flops himself on the floor and gnaws on the dog.  The dog usually just stands there and takes it.  Sometimes she tried to give him a hug.  Mostly it’s her trying to smother him.  Wouldn’t you if some furry thing was always biting your feet?  I know I want to do that with the neighbor’s dog.

A few weeks ago the dog laid down on the floor (which never happens) and the cat joined her.

I found a thing on Pinterest for an orange push-up smoothie.  I’m not a huge smoothie fan, but she mentioned that you could make it into ice cream.  Yesterday I gave it a whirl and the result is orange sherbet made of complete awesome.  I think the secret ingredient is the HFCS in the juice concentrate.  I’m normally against anything with HFCS in it, but I’ve learned over the years to follow a recipe to the letter and then modify it.  Besides… I was making ice cream.  By definition ice cream is not healthy.  I let it slide.

Here’s how to make the best dairy free orange sherbet complete with world’s worst tutorial photos.

First collect all of your ingredients.

1 can of Hawaiian’s Own Orange Mango “juice” concentrate (I suppose you could use a different brand, but this one works)
1 cup coconut milk (full fat is the best, not the inexpensive stuff you get at the Asian market. Shell out the cash on this one)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups ice

You’ll need 2 appliances to make this a little easier.  I have a Kitchenaid Blender and a Cuisnart Ice Cream Maker.  I love these two appliances.  They are probably my favorite two in all of my kitchen.  Any old blender and ice cream maker would work, but I don’t know what your results will be.

Throw the ice into the blender and use the ice chop setting to make it into shave ice.  This is where I differ from the original recipe.  She added the ice at the end.  I did it first.

The ice should look like this after you whiz it round.

Next dump in all of your ingredients.  The frozen “juice” concentrate should be partially thawed.  It would work if it wasn’t too.  When I measured out the coconut milk I made sure to scoop out any chunks of coconut fat.  That chunky bit will make your ice cream smoother and more the consistency of real sherbet.

Whiz round all of your ingredients until blended.  Turn up the blender to high to make it as smooth and non-ice chunky as possible.  It will look roughly like this:

Put your ice cream maker together and turn it on.  While the maker is running pour the liquid in.

Let the maker run until the ice cream is frozen.  This particular ice cream maker won’t freeze the ice cream to be eaten immediately, but it will look mostly like ice cream at this point.

Put your ice cream into a ice cream holding receptacle.  This assumes that you care about the consistency and don’t eat it directly out of the maker.  I may or may not have done that…

I have containers for ice cream that I purchased at Cash n’ Carry (my local restaurant supply company).  Make sure you label your lids.  I probably should have labeled it frozen snot so my 7 year old won’t know what is in there.

This recipe made exactly enough to fill my ice cream container.  Handy.

Give it a few hours and then serve it and enjoy!

See, world’s worst tutorial photos.  Does that matter?  No.  Why?  Because I just made dairy free ice cream made of pure awesome.

While other shoppers are quietly judging me, I’m judging right back.  That 1/2 of a chocolate cake and 32 lean cuisines aren’t doing you any favors lady.  And sir, I think the warehouse store sized container of “real” bacon bits totally negates the two cases of Kirkland brand diet shake in your cart.

Most of the time when I go into the grocery I have blinders on.  I go in, get what I want and get the hell out.  If I linger too long I find things like this…

Now, how many things can we count that are wrong with this photo?  1) a donut with cocoa puffs or captain crunch on it.  Ok, I get it.  There is a very famous donut shop in Portland, Oregon that totes delicious treats like Triple Chocolate Penetration and Captain My Crunch.  However Voodoo Doughnut does not market their artery hardening confections to children… 2) Kids Donuts.  3) would be Kids is spelled incorrectly.  Mmmm, donuts made with fresh baby goats.

We wonder why our children have a shorter life expectancy than we do.  Could it be that we are marketing 4000 calorie treats to our children?  Could it be that we think this is totally normal?  It makes me slightly stabby.

The second thing that I find rather disturbing is this one…

Now if you are like me it took a minute to get this one.  It’s a display made from 100% recycled paper.  Great!  It is for a product labeled as “EcoFoil,” which would be a pan made with recycled aluminum.  Fantastic!  The problem… it’s a disposable pan.  Where is that pan likely to end up?  In the garbage.

Our recycling companies tell us that we cannot recycle things with food waste on them.  That means in order to recycle this pan one would have to wash it.  If you are going to go to the trouble to wash a pan wouldn’t you want to keep it rather than throw it away?  This pan is designed to be thrown away.

But you’ll sleep better at night that it started out as the soda can you gave to your child to wash down the donut.

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*We cancelled our Smith Brother’s milk deliver account last year because there is only one milk drinker in our house and we found we were purchasing things just to get the occasional 1/2 gallon of milk.

In the nursery business Mother’s Day Saturday is the busiest day of the year.  Every person that works in a garden center in the Northwest goes home completely exhausted.  Last week I worked 9 hours Wednesday, 10 hours Thursday, 10 1/2 hours Friday and 9 hours Saturday.  They were non-stop days too.  We managed deliveries, put plants away, helped our fantastic customers and generally made our store as spotless as a garden center could get in preparation for Saturday.  Once the weekend arrived our focus shifted to making sure customers got just the right plant or gift for mom.

The store looked beautiful.

We had a ceiling full of gorgeous hanging baskets.

We had a great little surprise… $19.99 1 gallon Japanese Maples.

We may have gone into the day already exhausted, but we had a great time.  Early in the day I had a minute to snap a few photos.  I even was lucky enough to grab a photo of me and Travis.

We want to thank all of our fantastic customers for coming out to support us.  Your mom thanks you for the gifts you purchased for her.  Your garden thanks you too.

Now if you’ll pardon me I’m going to take advantage of the sunshine and work in my own garden.

Every year Travis orders truck after truck of plant material the week before Mother’s Day and then takes the day off when it all arrives.  That leaves me and Gabe to manage the deliveries, price the plant material, put it all away and still keep up our well known customer service.  This year we had the added help of one of our Spring employees, Jenny.  We couldn’t have done it without her.  We may have also swindled Travis into helping for about an hour.

In total the deliveries we received were perennials, nursery stock, bird seed, heirloom tomatoes, hard goods, Territorial Seeds and very large containers for a special order.

Our shop is stuffed and there is still more to come.  Today we will receive more annuals and veggies and hopefully a shipment from a new nursery that grows Japanese Maples (1 gallon pots!) and ROSES!  This will be a first in GardenSphere history.  We’ve never really carried roses before.

So what does this have to do with mom?  Well it’s Mother’s Day weekend of course.  Doesn’t mom deserve something awesome?  She spends all year putting up with your crap you should do something nice for her.

She might like a hanging basket.  We have lots of those.

She might like flowers.  There are shelves stuffed full of them.

Maybe she’s a vegetable gardener.  There are lots to choose from.

Whatever you purchase she’s going to love it, but I’m sure she’ll love it more if you buy it from us.

I wasn’t intending on reviewing Vassey today.  I had originally planned on a tutorial for a project I’m working on, but I didn’t finish it so you get this instead.

Vassey is located in the Puyallup* Valley.  You have to know where you are going in order to find this place.  Once you find it you won’t be disappointed.  Park in the small parking lot, or on the street if there isn’t enough parking and you’re greeted by a modest nursery yard.  They have a wonderful selection of plant material without the acres of nursery stock.  They have just enough without it feeling overwhelming.

I always start my trips by wandering through the roses and then into the rhododendron area and then onto the Japanese maples.  I generally skip the larger trees since I haven’t been in the market for one for quite a while.  I did browse the fruit trees because I would like a combo, non-espallier apple tree with varieties that we’ll actually eat.  I didn’t find what I wanted.

I looked through the hydrangeas for the ones I’ve been hunting for with no success.  Once I’ve hooked around the shade structure (which is covered in a beautiful kiwi) I’m greeted by the house garden.  The Vassey family home is on the site of the nursery.  The shop started in what was the front yard of the home.  The Vassey family has done a marvelous job creating a garden that everyone envies.  What gets most people is the wisteria tree.  If you’re going to visit Vassey I suggest you do so in May when the wisteria is blooming.  It is the most spectacular sight.

While I was there yesterdayI noticed there was a dove tree behind the wisteria.  Full sized, fully blooming dove trees don’t happen very often.  There is one in the garden next door to Lakewold Gardens and one at Vassey.  It was difficult to photograph with my phone.

Once I’ve ooh and ahhed over the garden I made my way into the annuals house.  I skipped perennials this trip.

Vassey grows all of their own hanging baskets and nearly all of their own annuals.  I shop here because they carry annuals that I can’t find from our regular growers.  This year I picked up Crackling Fire, Sweet Tart and Plum million bells.  Last year I snagged picotee pink geraniums.

Up the back steps you’ll enter into a small gift shop that is packed full of charming art.  Many years ago I purchased my Garden sign that hangs on my potting shed.

Outside of the garden shop is a large area of decorative containers and veggie starts.

Vassey doesn’t carry a huge selection of hard goods or soils, but it is enough.  They focus on excellent quality plant material and that is what keeps me coming back.

You can visit Vassey Nursery at

2424 Tacoma Road, Puyallup WA 98371

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* pronounced pew-AL-up for those of you outside of the northwest

The beans were moved to two 4′x4′ beds this year.  A welded wire panel is roughly 4′x4′.  How convenient!  I bought 4 panels at my local home improvement store.  My husband had to cut the pointy bits off the ends.  It’s a good thing he did it because with my tendency for injury I’m sure I would have ended up at the ER with that one.

Once the pointy bits were cut off I zip tied the tops together.  I will interject here to tell you that zip ties are the gardener’s best friend.

We spread the panels out and they were so tall and flexible that they bowed in the middle.  My husband looked at me and said, “well that won’t work.”  Never fear!  I had bamboo poles and ZIP TIES!

Stick the poles in the ground, zip tie them at the top and then attach the panels to the poles with none other than… zip ties!

When we put up the supports the beans had not emerged.  I was sure I would have to plant them again.  The bean gods are looking down on me with favor this year… except for that slug issue.

Chicken Coop + Fence + Coop Expansion = hot mess.

Basically the latter of those two is not happening turning hot mess into HOT BURNING MESS.  And by that I mean the build up of shavings, dirt and chicken poo right in front of the coop.  There is a 28″ path between the front of the coop and my son’s vegetable garden.  That area tends to stay rather wet so it has been a soggy smelly mess.

I had a bunch of bricks laying around.  I tend to hoard building supplies, but never enough to actually finish a project so that meant a trip to the home improvement store.  Of course they didn’t have the same type of bricks that I had at home so I went with the next closest thing.  Why should anything in my garden match and be beautiful?

I put my husband on an airplane and then set off to build my little patio.

I started by digging out the area in front of the coop.  The area my coop sits on was an RV parking area in it’s former life so the soil is pretty much heavy gravel.  This made digging rather challenging.  It also made figuring out what was level extra challenging.  When it comes to me and laying pathways or patios “good enough for government work” is my motto.  I can’t tell you how many

paths my husband has pulled up and re-laid due to my serious case of meh.  This one will be no exception.  I warned him of that before he left.  He just rolled his eyes.

At this point the girls and I stopped for snack time.  I was out of beer so I had to settle for a banana.  The girls cleaned up the worms in the area.

After snack time I put down paver edging and filled the area with paver base.  I should say that in projects like this I tend to ignore that whole measure thing.  I cut my edging for the ends the distance between the coop and the raised bed.  I also was a little lazy when it came to filling and leveling the paver base.  In an attempt to cut corners and costs I also didn’t put down the “step 2″ sand on top of the paver base.

I compacted the base and then started in on the bricks.  Laying the bricks was fairly straight forward until I whacked my thumb with a mallet.  They totally don’t tell you that part on those home improvement shows.

I continued on my brick laying until I somehow smacked my pinky finger with the mallet.  I’m not exactly sure how I did that.  I said some choice words and kept on working.  A few minutes later I the glove on my left hand started to feel odd.  I pulled it off to investigate only to find out that the smack to my pinky was slightly worse than originally thought.

Oops.  A quick wash up and band aid I declared it wasn’t going to fall off so back to work.

I finished laying the rest of the bricks (without losing any more fingers).

I am aware the bricks don’t match and aren’t the same size.  Oh well.  Once all of the bricks were down I filled in the big gap between the bricks and the raised bed with the gravel/soil stuff.  I might throw a little mint seed in there.  Next came sand to lock everything into space.

Now I may be a little half-assed in my paver laying ability, but I do know the value of a good sand layer on top.  My mother-in-law was the queen of the paver patio.  She taught me well.  So the steps go like this: 1) put on a blob of sand, 2) sweep the sand around, 3) dance around on the cracks to work the sand in (she may or may not have taught me that part) 4) sweep the sand some more.

Once all of the cracks are filled sweep all of the sand away and sit back to admire your work.

Yes, there is a slight dip right in front of the door.  I’m calling that a slope for drainage.

When you buy your potatoes and ask how to grow them we always ask if you’re going to do it in a container, in the ground or a raised bed.  There are different techniques for each.  Ok, not really for in ground vs. raised bed, but containers are a different story.

Shockingly this isn’t how to plant potatoes in a container.  This is what happens when you plant your potatoes in a raised bed (or in the ground).

There is a reason we suggest potatoes in a “potato tower” or large nursery bucket or one of those potato bags or any other potato dedicated device.

Last year I planted my potatoes in 2 raised beds in my garden.  One set was planted in “the chicken yard.”  The other was in the front garden.  While I was turning both beds I found small potatoes in the soil.  This isn’t shocking.  Potatoes are notoriously difficult to harvest every last one of.  I knew this going in.

In the front bed I decided to plant onions there.  Probably not the best for crop rotation, but the layout of my garden doesn’t lend itself to proper crop rotation.  Meh.  So I turned the bed and found a few wayward potatoes.  I did a thorough search for additional tubers and came up empty.

I was smug in my gardening awesomeness.

Little did I know there were little tubers remaining in the soil and they were organizing.  I’m pretty sure they were forming a little potato union with the sole purpose of demanding better fertilizer and more water.  I don’t know what they are thinking.  I give them top notch Dr. Earth and we live in Washington!  How much more water do they want.

We suspect they are joining with the dandelions and may take over the world.

Happy Friday.  May your garden give you many surprises.