Week 20 - Dottie's Fun Visit

The highlight of the week was clearly Dottie’s visit. As usual, her flight was late but this time it was only by 2.5 hours, which actually worked out better for me because I got to go to Paul Wesselman’s (the Ripples guy) event at UNL. Anyway, by the time Dottie got in and we stopped for supper at McFoster’s and then at the market to buy low carb everything, it was late enough that we opted to head home rather than see Angels and Demons, our movie pick for this year.

Saturday we set the alarm for 7:00 because we were headed to Bluebird Nursery in Clarkson to pick up the wildflower plugs for the library’s prairie planting. Nancy and Lorri were coming along so we had a schedule of pick ups to keep to. We arrived in Clarkson and headed to the wholesale offices to pick up the plugs. Harlan Hamernik, the founder of Bluebird, was there so I told him “Hello” from our friend Susan. Well one thing led to another and he brought us 2 additional flats of his own plants to add to the prairie, including some baptisia minor that isn’t even on the market yet. Score! Before we even hit Gardenland to buy plants for ourselves, the Fit was pretty full. By the time we were done, there were plants everywhere.

We had a few other stops along the way – the butcher in Clarkson, Toman’s City Market, for some of their yummy hotdogs and sausage, lunch in a bowling alley in Dodge when we found our usual restaurant closed, and finally a bait shop in Fremont on a quest for crawdads and minnows for one of Nancy’s kids for a school project. We had fun everywhere we went and here are a couple of things we didn’t expect to hear when we headed out that morning:
“Can you hold your meat and smile?” (I said when taking the butcher’s picture)
“Wow, a free slug!” (Nancy at the bait shop)
We got a tour of Nancy’s house (a fabulous Victorian in the boonies) and then went home to enjoy some tea on the deck. Dottie wanted to go to the movie that night but I was sick of driving and didn’t want to face another trip in the car (the closet theatre is 25 miles away – this is not New Jersey!), so we watched DVD’s at home and got to bed late.

Sunday we started the day with Helen and Charlie at Rezac’s for breakfast. Later, we hit the Venice Antiques sale, where I scored the most wonderful potting bench. I had just mentioned to Dottie over tea the previous day that I should either get a new rabbit or take the cage down and get a potting bench. How perfect! From Venice we went to Angels and Demons (good movie) then met Helen and Charlie at Farmer Brown’s for prime rib. It was only 4:30 so we ate with all the blue hairs. This time was specifically chosen so we could be home in time to watch the Survivor finale. J.T. won – yay! We went to bed and didn’t set an alarm for the first time. I was looking forward to sleeping in (yeah, right) since our only plan Monday was to grab lunch and drop Dottie at Eppley by 1:00. It was a whirlwind weekend but lots of fun.