HAZEL DELL — Kim Messick said she thought her Sunday would include more pajamas, after a busy Mother’s Day week and weekend working in a flower shop, but daughter Kate Northcut had other ideas.
Sunday was also Messick’s birthday, Northcut said, so she and her mother’s work friends brought her to the Master Gardener Foundation of Clark County’s annual plant sale at the 78th Street Heritage Farm in Hazel Dell.
“I’m glad I got out of pajamas and came,” Messick said, pulling a wagon full of tomato plants and plants that like the shade, for her shady yard.
“We’re going to go home and relax and plant, maybe,” Northcut said, but that might depend on the weather.
While the weather was better for Mother’s Day than Saturday, scores braved the weekend’s wet-turned-muddy weather to scratch their plant itches.
“The weather is our worst enemy,” said Nancy Funk, one of the master gardeners working the plant sale.
Organizers used the field east of the farm for parking Saturday, but it turned into such a mud pit people needed help moving their cars, and it was closed off for Sunday.
None of that seemed to be a problem, though, Funk said. Customers were understanding and plentiful.
“But people still came. We had more people in line before we opened — this year, in the rain — than we’ve ever had. Some of them were starting to line up at 7:30 in the morning,” she said.
Every plant was in demand, she said. Most customers seemed to be grabbing a little bit of everything of every kind, with their carts and wagons filled with annual flowers to vegetables to shrubs.
“Everything has been really popular this year,” she said. “We sold out of hardy fuchsia by 1 o’clock yesterday.”
Bessie and Dan Schubert brought their two children, 8-year-old Leona and 6-year-old Jack. Lots of other kids came to the plant sale, too, and helped pull their parents’ wagons and find the good mud puddles.
Typically, their family often tries to do something planting-related around Mother’s Day, Bessie Schubert said. The plant sale seemed like a good idea.
“It’s a good place to get a good deal on some quality plants,” Dan Schubert said, adding its nice to know they weren’t grown elsewhere then shipped.
By the time they got to the plant sale Sunday most of the greenhouses and displays, which had been thick with plants for sale, were picked clean.
“It was pretty barren, but that’s OK. This is going to start us out,” Bessie Schubert said.
They grabbed pepper plants, tomato plants and some herbs. Bessie Schubert said the rest of the garden — their kale, spinach and chard — they plan to grow from seed.
Funk said one of the questions many gardeners fielded over the weekend was when to plant, considering the spring’s lasting rainy weather.
For many plants, she said, the soil and overnight air is still a bit too cold, but plants in raised beds should fare better.
Bessie Schubert said they might let their tomato plants sit for a bit before planting them in their raised beds, once there’s room.
“They’ve been out playing in them,” Dan Schubert said, gesturing at the kids.
“The rules are, until there are plants in the beds, you can play in the dirt,” Bessie Schubert said. “After that, no.”
