About a week ago I confessed to a colleague at the College that I was feeling a touch of the winter blues with all of this oppressive winter weather. She became very excited and said, "Have you ever gone to the IX Center Home and Garden Show?" I never have, and the way she described it, yes, this was the answer to my winter blahs. Beautiful gardens, flowers everywhere, a certain taste of Spring that would tide me over until I could get out into my garden and start my seeds!
Richard and I decided to make the show a part of our Valentine's Day plans. We would spend the afternoon at the show, then head to our late evening reservations at my new favorite restaurant, VegiTerranean. I'm sure Richard would have rather spent the day hanging out at the comic book store then dinner at Outback, but he loves me and was up for it.
We started our trip early in the afternoon and stopped at Pad Thai for lunch (a very yummy start to the day) then headed up to the IX Center. After shelling out $8 for parking and $26 dollars for our two tickets, we walked through the arches into the show.
Hmmm... The flowers, well, they looked a little worse for ware. Yes, the entrance was surrounded with flowers, but to be honest, it wasn't anything that I haven't seen surrounding hundreds of businesses in the summer. But I had hope that it would get better, and it was the second-to-the-last day of the show. Of course the flowers would be a little sad. I heard that there was a section of the show dedicated to green living and I was hoping to see some rain barrels, composters, and other such things I'm curious to add to my garden.
So we turned the corner and this is what we saw:
Holy crud. Table after table of info-mercial wares, wireless phone vendors, and jewelry crafters. What? Is this the home and garden show??? Where are the gardening tools? The compost bins? Okay, there was one rain barrel displayed in the Petitti garden pavillion. There was also one vendor selling seed packets, but to be honest, it was too chaotic to browse.Richard and I made our way through the crowded vendors, surrounded by Shammy WoW knock-offs. There were some highlights that I just can't explain. There was the Greyhound Rescue with some very sweet dogs begging for money. And then there was this...
There was a skunk rescue group sharing the Oreck vacuum exhibit. Weird, right?
Richard enjoyed petting the skunk. But I'm not sure the skunk enjoyed being pet.One last odd highlight from the show. There was a vendor (Potpourri Patch) selling potpourri. They had these little pillows filled with catnip called "Kitty Kickers." We purchased one to bring home to the kids. This is now the cat's favorite toy. I wish we would have purchased three, since the cats really haven't figured out how to take turns or share.
Scout loves the kitty kicker.
So does Monkey (Really, she does love it!)Buttercup loves it, too, but she was sleeping off her catnip high at the time of picture-taking.
My verdict on the Home and Garden Show? I would have rather spent two hours shopping at Donzell's.
We left the show a little earlier than anticipated, and headed to Borders to kill some time before our dinner reservations.
When we arrived at the restaurant we got our seats at a small table that was really close to a bunch of other tables. Not the most romantic of settings, but at least this time we didn't have one of those tall tables with our feet dangling off the bar stools.
Our meal was fantastic and just what I hoped it would be. By the time we ordered they really didn't have any specials left (a drawback of eating at 8 p.m.) and I was beginning to wonder if they would have any tiramisu left when it came time to order dessert. And thankfully, they did!
So, our date ended on a happy note.
2 comments:
Okay, that's completely helpful about your trip to the show. I was debating of going this year since we are planning the kitchen remake and thought we might get some home ideas. I'm not a huge gardener although I will be putting one in this year. But I decided the money wasn't worth it and after the fantastic food show, I had a feeling it was a lot of vendors. Food show was fun because of the samples, but I didn't know how I would sample home and garden stuff. ATI supposedly had a booth - but again you just reinforced my decision not to go and I'm glad we saved our money for our kitchen!
Thanks for the link, Jeph! What a goldmine of gardening info.
Oh, and there were tons of vendors selling the sour cream dip concoctions at the garden show, too! What? Maybe we're supposed to use it as spackle?
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