Pacific Northwest Gardening: PLEASE! WE NEED YOUR INPUT FOR ROUNDUP PLANNING!!! HELP!!!, 1 by Rarejem

Rarejem wrote:
We have set the official date and place for the roundup, but need help from the members who plan to come so we can make the First Annual PNW Roundup as fun as possible for everyone.

Location: Lynn Weidman's house ...the address is found in the details thread...Buckley, Washington

(details found at http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/962968/ )

DATE DETAILS:

Arrival time can be any time from Friday 8-28-09 (noonish or so) on.
Departure time from Lynn Weidman's can be as late as Monday afternoon 8-31-09.


FRIDAY:

We are planning on having a simple arrival dinner on Friday that will consist of chilli and bread, and will be available from 6:00 on, so if you get there Friday night, you will have a hot meal waiting.

SATURDAY:

Our thoughts were to organize a group outing for the day to enjoy both the local area and getting to know each other.

I was thinking that we should start Saturday's activities with a no-host (that means you buy your own for those not down with the lingo :P ) breakfast at the local Shari's for anyone interested in a morning meal, to ease the workload of our generous hostess. There will definitely be coffee available at Lynn's for anyone who is not a "food first thing in the morning" type of person.

Pixydish has been kind enough to offer to open her garden in Lakewood to us for a tour, and has suggested a tour of Lakewold gardens which is within walking distance from her home (at a cost of $5/person). She gave me the website if you are interested. http://www.lakewoldgardens.org/
We could do the Lakewold tour in the morning, and then do a tour/picnic at Pixy's (we could either each bring in our own take out from the local businesses, or if enough people are interested, we could pool $$ and have a simple sandwich lunch catered.

There are a couple of very nice nurserys (Watson's, Vassey and Windmill) that are between Lynn's and Melissa's that we could stop at either before or afterward (we were leaning towards afterward just in case you saw something in either garden that you just HAD to have :P )

If we did such a group tour, we could make something of an official time line, so that latecommers could hook up with the group mid-tour and not be totally left out.

Again, this is just my thinking, but I figured it would be nice to be back to Lynn's around 3 or 4ish, so people could rest after a morning of walking and talking.

IF THIS KIND OF TOUR SOUNDS GOOD TO YOU, PLEASE LET US KNOW. IF YOU WOULD RATHER HANG OUT AND GO NURSERY HOPPING WITH A LESS FORMAL STRUCTURE, LET US KNOW THAT AS WELL. We are really open, but want to have structure available if people would like it that way, but as this is our first time putting something like this together, we are shooting in the dark!

The evening will start with the "official" tour of our hostess' garden, and our plant and seed exchanges before a bar-b-q potluck dinner.

We are planning to do a door prize drawing after dinner (if anyone has anything that they would be willing to donate as door prizes, it would be fantastic! Plants that you have to share, but may not have enough to share with more than one person, garden ornaments, houseplants, anything fun that you can think of.... we have raffle tickets, and plan to put everything provided as door prizes on one table and first ticket drawn gets first pick, and tickets are drawn until prizes are gone.)

Again, as mentioned above, we plan to have a potluck dinner. We would love to know what you would be planning on bringing so we can make sure the meal is well rounded. For example, PNWMountaingirl and I will be bringing salmon as we will be fishing for a week in Canada that month.

The evening will end with a BYOB bonfire.

SUNDAY:

PNWMountaingirl and I will be hosting a breakfast and garden tour in our yards that are about a mile and a half or so away from Lynn's Sunday morning. We plan on fresh fruit, biscuts and gravy, and egg souffle, along with coffee of course. As far as I know right now, this is the last "official" roundup meal we are planning.

The rest of the day will be left to whatever activities you would like to pursue on your own or in groups. As mentioned above, accomodations will still be available at Lynn's through Monday afternoon, but we don't have plans for Sunday lunch or dinner at this point. There are plenty (well, OK, at least a few) restaurants within 5 miles of Lynn's house, so if you are staying over, you have many options.

We are planning on having a list of and maps to local attractions, and there was a suggestion of maybe coordinating some kind of artsy or garden class that we may fit in to all this as well. We are also working on possible activities for the "non" garden addicts.

At this point, for planning purposes/food/Lakewold reservations etc, we would like to know (or get your input on)...

1. Are you coming, and how many will be in your party?

2. What kind of accomodations will you require.

3. When are you planning on arriving, and when are you planning on departing.

4. Does the plan for Saturday sound like fun and something that you would be interested in participating in, or would people rather do stuff on their own? We want everyone to have the best time possible, so want as much input as possible.

5. What time shoud we start activities on Saturday? What time should we schedule breakfast on Sunday? We don't want people to think that we are starting things too early, especially if they are driving out on Saturday morning from a distance.

6. As very kindly suggested, we are planning on arranging food to accomodate people who do not eat meat...but we would kind of like an idea ahead of time to help with preperation if you would like vegetarian chilli, etc.

A lot to think about, but as much help and input that you can give will be greatly appreciated. We do want this to be successful, and firming up plans will make it much easier.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Julie

This message was edited May 4, 2009 11:26 PM

This message was edited May 5, 2009 7:58 AM