Thursday, March 4, 2010

Garden Book Shopping (on vacation)

Part of my continuing series on our October trip to California…

If you’re not gardening, scheming about your garden, or shopping for plants, what’s the next best thing? Reading garden books! My husband can spend hours in a bookstore and as long as they have a good gardening section I’m fine with that. But I think I’ve been spoiled by the choices at Powell’s, our Portland book Mecca. The gardening sections in the bookstores we visited in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and Santa Barbara left me bored, 15 minutes and I was ready to move on.

At Vromans in Pasadena I finally found a few new titles worth browsing. But the big selection was at Hennessey and Ingalls in Santa Monica!
Finally…an incredible selection of garden, landscape and design books! I was in book heaven. If you are in the area you should plan a visit, if not possible then their website looks promising, check out the landscape and horticulture category.
I could have shopped longer, but we had to cut our browsing short to run outside and catch the sunset. I know sunset pictures, how trite. But these sunset pictures have the ocean and agave blooms!
And the Santa Monica pier...
And if you look closely even the moon!

8 comments:

  1. That last photo is AMAZING! Love it!

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  2. Hi Loree~~ Boy that is a toss up, for sure. Garden book mania versus real-time beauty. These are the kinds of photos that evoke the "all is right with the world" hopefulness, you know? The blooming Yucca, now that's just too coincidental to be coincidental. Something higher at work here maybe?

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  3. Beautiful photos, WOW!

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  4. Glad you got those sunset pics. They are classic! Sorry you didn't get your book fix in the Bay area. Great bookstores there, but maybe not to compare with Powell's, how could they?! You guys are spoiled, it's true.

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  5. I love reading these posts on your trip to Calif. Hennessy & Ingalls is a fabulous bookstore, one I rarely get to because, although approx 30 miles away, Santa Monica/the Westwide is one of the most difficult places to get to in LA. It'd take me about 2 hours because of traffic. Book Soup on Sunset Blvd. is another bookstore you'd never get your husband out of. (and wondering what you both thought of driving around LA...)

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  6. Amazing Agave (americana?) photos. They look like palms on Hawaii at sunset (well, I have not been to Hawaii, but I imagine that is what it would look like). Matti

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  7. Rob, thank you! I feared they bordered on "yawn" inspiring. Appreciate the positive words.

    Grace, blooming agave! Even better! Yes I felt very lucky to be there at the same time they were blooming..."just for me!"

    Thanks Evelyn!

    Karen, all the more money to spend on plants then right? Not all bad.

    Denise, I will remember that recommendation for the next time we're there, thank you! You know we really weren't all that phased by the traffic. Having lived in Seattle and Portland, where your desire to go somewhere is often tempered by traffic on a bridge or ferry (many water ways...rivers, lakes, the Puget Sound) we are used to just dealing with it.

    faroutflora, glad to hear I'm not the only plant lover who hasn't been to Hawaii. I like the comparison though!

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  8. Nice sunset shots. I've never been able to figure out how to get a good shot of agave flower stalks, but the sunset shot does the trick.

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