We
registered and checked out the
vendor area, people were just beginning to set our their wares. Cindy knows EVERYONE so every five feet or so she was greeting an old friend. Eventually we worked our way around without her, studying the pots and trees and tools with an eye toward any must-have bargains.
I cornered
Marty Mann and had him sign our copies of
his new book. He wrote a little something in each one too. The books look great and Marty will do well with them. There were a lot of trees to choose from already, but the only one I grabbed was a nice little shohin collected redwood with lots of movement and deadwood in a swirl.
Jim Barrett had the most adorable little pots for two and three dollars (!!!) the tiniest you've ever seen. Grabbed a palm full of those, who could resist? One is so small that you couldn't put two matches into it side by side.
Impressive trees were being carried into the exhibit hall but we stayed out of the way. Serious business, setting up those displays, it takes concentration and skill. We met a lot of people we had only heard of, and said hello to old friends too. Then we finally dragged ourselves out to dinner at "
Joe's Crab Shack", a seafood place with plastic seagulls and strange things hanging from the ceiling. We sat under a huge shark, must have been nine feet long, suspended on invisible wires. We sat with
Marty Mann,
Phil Tacktill and
Janet Wanerka,
Bob Meyer, and
Cindy Read of course. And your two roving correspondants. At another table was
Harry Hirao, and the President of the GSBF,
Joe James, with some friends. Harry is a favorite of everyone, a real sweetie who's about ninety years old. Harry is "Mr. California Juniper" and the acknowledged master of collected Calif. junipers, as well as his suiseki. He has donated stones to the collection of the
Wild Animal Park in San Diego.
We went back to the registration desk and had to sign up for the lunches and dinners. Oh, the decisions! Who to sit with? People we know, or people we don't? Finally we decided to go with groups we didn't really know mostly so that we can meet new people. That's the whole point, right?
We snuck into the workshop area, where the floors are covered with thick plastic and tomorrow's trees are sitting ready on the tables. I signed up for the
Ted Matson Liquidamber workshop in the morning, and the trees sitting on the table were all fantastic! Beautiful, big, with lots of branching. The
other workshops in the morning are manzanita, Lavender Star Flower, and procumbens. All of the stock looked great.
More pictures tomorrow, as roving reporter Michelle wends her way amongst the enthusiasts and snaps their photos for posterity.
Joanie