Nursery sale road trip

Memorial Day weekend is the annual Lawyer Nursery retail sales event where the nursery wholesaler sells to the general public. I have been to two of these sales in the past and bought some trees and shrubs.  Donna never had been to one of these sales and was up for a road trip to Plains, MT to see what they had and possibly buy some plants.  She bought a few.

Here is their web site.  At this site you can look at what items they have for sale and prices:  http://www.nurserystocksale.com/plains-sale/

 Outside the nursery.

After the rush passed.  When we got in line for the checkout, we were where I took this photo.  The line went to the far end of the room and round the corner into another big room.  This photo only shows maybe half the plants on sale.

 
In the past I found the event sold out of some popular plants by the afternoon of the first day.  Donna is an early riser and wanted to be there when they opened at 9 am.  That meant leaving around 7 am for a two hour drive.  Early for me as I don't usually get up until 9 am.

We arrived right at 9 am.  The doors were not opened yet and a long line of people were waiting outside.  Once inside most people pretty much knew what trees and shrubs they wanted and quickly got them and a long line at the checkout formed.

The plants had colored tags indicating prices from $1 to $12 in $1 dollar increments.  The checkout lines had employees to count the items and mark a form with the number of items at corresponding dollar amounts.  The cashier then added them up.

I generally had an idea of what I wanted, but I also browsed for items that caught my eye as they had photos of the plants by each bin that contained the plants.

I bought 12 trees and shrubs for $65.  I bought two varieties of plum trees to replace the ones that had died a few years ago.  I bought a half dozen pine and fir trees, several dogwood shrubs, a black walnut tree, a variety of serviceberry bush I hadn't seen before and a few other trees/shrubs that caught my eye.

The nursery provided plastic bags to hold the items. The trees and shrubs were sold bare root. The roots were wet in the bins.  I also got some newspapers I brought along wet and placed them on the roots to keep them moist.  We took a scenic drive home and a few of the roots did start to get dry by the time we got home.  It was a warm day and Donna's car is black.

Once home I filled a few pails with water and placed the roots in them.  Daisy of course had to sample the water before I put the roots in the pails.

Now to find a place to plant everything.

After visiting the nursery we drove up the Clark Fork Valley to the Noxon Dam.

Then back down the Clark Fork Valley and near the Bison Range to Hwy 93 to head back to Kalispell.  We had nice views of the Mission Mountains as we drove.

We planned on eating at the Hot Spot Thai Restaurant again in Polson, Montana but discovered they were closed from 2:30 pm to 5 pm.  It was now 3:50 pm.  So we ate at another restaurant in Polson.  The food there was average.

We got home around 7 pm.