Alena Jean Nursery & Flower Shop

I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to post about Alena’s shop! Other than being friends with her forev’s, Alena’s shop is one of my weekly addictions:

Cracked out from green tea at the sushi lounge - check.

Veggies & fruit (and those crazy good malt balls) from G. Berta farm stand - check.

Flowers from Alena’s – check!

Alena opened her adorable shop on 340 Purissima (x street Mill) in Half Moon Bay, in 2005. Nestled in the amazing barn her dad (Jerry Whiting) owns and operates his landscape construction company out of. Jerry has been doing coastal landscapes since the 70′s, and has created gorgeous gardens all over HMB and beyond. She started small, just using a corner of the barn, sharing the rest with her dad. As business grew Alena booted him out and e x p a n d e d, creating a fabulous flower shop and nursery. There you will find flats and flats of gorgeous Annie’s Annuals, and other hard to find gems. Alena’s style leans towards (grabs and smacks about) the eccentric… always interesting and architectural. You will find your basic and beautiful rose and lily flower arrangement – but you’ll also find arrangements with artichokes, pods of all sorts, tillandsia, moss dripping, wild branches… in all sorts of cool vessels. However, my favorite part of the shop, is the shop itself. It’s worth a trip just putzing around and eying all of the gorgeous wood architecture and interesting fixtures. Wide plank barn wood. Irrigation key handles. Driftwood. Yep, it’s rustic heaven!

Next time you are in HMB – or need some fabulous flowers – check out Alena Jean Nursery & Flower Shop!

340 Purissima, HMB. 650.726.3662

Hours – Tues – Sat/ 10 – 5pm. Sun/ 11 – 3pm.

www.alenasdesigns.com

Isn’t this just the type of thing you do on monday morning?

It was the perfect Fall, HMB day for a good old fashioned weigh off. The sun was starting to shine through the fog, the crows were in full force bombing people with walnuts (see last post) and old ladies were in their very best pumpkin sweaters with matching tacky socks. It was awesome. Here are some pic’s:

Insanely huge pumpkin

Farmer John with one of his beauties...

HMB paparazzi

Giant pumpkin, still on life support!

Going to be weighed...

It was pretty amazing to see them schlep the pumpkins from the trucks to the stage (yes, the pumpkins go on a stage for weighing. There are pumpkin fans and all! I personally am advocating for a spin off show entitled, “Pumpkins & Tiaras”.) with the forklift… all the while the farmer’s looking like their babies had been snatched!

Want giants of your own?

All very pumpkin-y, very Half Moon Bay.

So. Ok. I’ve been there.

The cult-like agenda of having “the gurls” over to watch Sex and the City every time either :

A. an episode aired

B. someone got dumped by their rat-bastard boyfriend

C. someone was about to dump their rat-bastard boyfriend

So, of course I went to see the movie!

But I was a tad hesitant to go in the first place, since I has just finished a long day of salvia planting and wasn’t feeling my most glamorous, complete with dirt stained hands and arms. I had a bit of time to shop for my garden the day before, and decided the salvias were too good to pass up. So I loaded them in my already packed-with-plants truck and headed for home. I gardened just up until dinner and realized I needed to actually shower in order to be seen in public. Upon that realization, I was downtrodden, knowing what a feat it would be in my garden obsessed state..  But I went to the movie anyway and, in fact,  was momentarily entertained… right up until they started in with the menopausal jokes and whore-endous karaoke jam. It just wasn’t my cup of champagne tea.

Ahhh, but there were:

These sweet ass Mykita & Bernhard gold aviator sunglasses! Ohhhhwee!

I’d garden in these. In fact… I will garden in these.

And hopefully by the time the salvias need dead-heading.

Stay Tuned!

I’ve had a pot by my front door for about a year and a half now. When I first moved to this house, I planted it with a fabulous little daphne, some nepeta and I think a couple annuals. Well, everything has filled in nicely – except growing towards the back, of course towards the sun. So I filled the empty void with Buddha. This isn’t so much a philosophical statement, as it is a literal one. I bought an amazing gold tinted Buddha head from a statuary store in HMB and I love it!

Feel free to share your favorites… here are some of mine.

1) There’s the mildly annoying, possibly harmless – but still spam:

federalgrantconnection.org/
info@federalgrantconnection.org
174.131.38.99

Very good article, I’m glad to be a reader.

2) Then there’s the obvious plug for their own blog or business… with nothing really contributing to the dialogue:

lowest-rate-loans.com
lilypeterson41@gmail.com
194.44.169.179

I propose not to hold off until you get enough amount of money to order goods! You can just get the personal loans or just auto loan and feel yourself fine

3) With my lovely blog name, I get all kinds of fun sexual comments:

allison@squirttechnique.com
173.234.121.182

Nice Make Women Squirthttp://www.squirttechnique.com

4) Then there’s the ones that are so obscure you don’t really know what the hell is going on… except that it’s spam:

5) The over seas spam is always a good time:

dlkpdj@obwmsi.com
84.14.108.29

G9uhF3 sbhpgibjohfa, [url=http://hdtmdicdtdqc.com/]hdtmdicdtdqc[/url], [link=http://amzemjmccqmn.com/]amzemjmccqmn[/link], http://evwhegjtsiby.com/

6) And then there’s the spam that misspells words, which shows how much time is involved in creating the thoughtful post:

You really can’t go wrong with getting anything from Artifact Design & Salvage, out of Sonoma. And I’m really not just saying this to plug anyone – it’s just true. Every time I go shopping for one of my client’s while accidentally getting drunk/wine tasting in Sonoma, to find that perfect something for the garden – this is one of the meccas I travel to.

For instance, where else can you find a bunch of over sized clock/wheel thingies?

I can imagine these installed on a huge fence or to cover a boring retaining wall… nothing growing on them, but maybe a great  hedge line planted on either side?

Now mind you, everything looks a whole lot cooler when you have had a few glasses of wine in you, but either way I suggest going.

This is something you could post on your neighbors fence when they forget to weed! Although I haven’t mowed my lawn since 1942 so who am I kidding.

Here’s how it went down:

Free plastic pots from HMB Nursery

Steal Ask local nursery if they have any pots they don’t need (it’s always a Yes! Take them!)

Lots of dirt.

Then, have Soil Farm deliver a shit ton of soil… but not just any soil! I have a super secret soil blend – so fabulous that throngs of screaming clients beg me for the ingredients. And for a limited time only you get them:

1 yard mushroom compost

.5 yard Nitro-infused Redwood shavings

1 scoop of the smallest Lava rock available

.5 ton Oly #2 sand

1 yard Planting Mix (they blend a couple compost with some clean top soil… it’s just for bulking up the mix)

*This gets blended together and is great for repotting or propagating plants. The rest can be used to top dress your garden’s soil.

Bag O' Cuttingz

Then! You take your pillaged cuttings and get planting!

Your result is muy, muy baby plants!

muymuy babies!

More muymuy babies!

38HKT64U6ZFW

If Laura hadn’t reminded me I would have almost forgot to grab my ticket to the SF Flower & Garden Show early… having to bum a ticket at the door like I did last year. I’m usually one of those dorks that loves to get tickets early, print out directions early, schedule things… and so on. If I don’t control plan ahead of time, I get itchy. So luckily, I’m ahead of the game this year. (Thanks Laura!!!!!!!)

I absolutely love the flower and garden show (who doesn’t? It’s flowers and garden stuff!)…. but I do take a little issue with pictures of people gardening – when they are not dirty! It’s like, seriously? Who are you fooling. I mean it’s one thing to accidentally fall asleep in a mushroom patch wearing jewels, but it is quite another to be at a potting bench not covered in soil. Plus – that child should probably be whining about not being able to go inside and watch Barney or something, rather than perfectly posing… right? (Do kids still watch Barney?)

Beyond that – the SF Flower & Garden is fantastic and I’m going (Carla, you’re coming with… and buying me a corn dog or something.) Afterwards, be sure to tune back in about my findings….

For more info about how you can get your sweet buns to the show, go to….

www.sfgardenshow.com

I was imagining what it would be like to die from a Fly Agaric mushroom… plus, my amazing paparazzi photographer, Carla, threw a little dirt on me and some got in my eye balls. I could tell right away the photo shoot was going to be amazing, since she was laughing at me and telling me how there was probably bugs in my hair – or that I was ingesting deadly mushroom spores. Nothing says professionalism, like when your photographer keeps looking down at the camera to review the shots, and says, “Ohhh man! That one is really bad. I’m going to delete it right now.”

But it’s not Carla’s fault. I lead her there under false pretenses, saying it would be a 30 minute trip to take a couple fun pic.’s of me next to these really cool mushrooms. (“let’s go! It’ll be sooo fun!”)And, I needed her to come – uh, like, now! – since rain was upon us. It probably wasn’t until she saw the pearl necklaces, wardrobe changes, and Dior lipgloss did she realize what she committed herself to.

I have been trapped by Carla many times before though. Back in the days where Carla did amazing flower arrangements – rather than amazing gardening – she would trick me to go with her to the SF Flower Market.

Carla: “Jenn do you want to come with me to the flower market!? It’ll be so fun and there are tons of flowers!”

Jenn: “Sure! That sounds great!”

Little did I know it meant getting there by 3-4AM and schlepping her bounty around like some sort of tired pack mule. It was cold and thankless… but for some reason, I’d keep going back with her… thinking maybe the next trip would be really fun.

So, I guess you could say I took a little pleasure forcing Carla to be my paparazzi for the morning. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta take pic.’s of me in dirt next to deadly mushrooms.

Uh oh, dead again next to mushroom

Happy Next To Mushroom

Stumped on what to get your loved one for Valentine’s Day???

Well, flowers of course.… oh ya and diamonds. Puppies are good too.

But for a more eco-inspired Valentine’s Day gift check out Sustainable Harvest International and their gift of a chocolate forest!

“The mission of Sustainable Harvest International (SHI) is to provide farming families in Central America with the training and tools to overcome poverty while restoring our planet’s tropical forests.

Since the organization’s start in 1997, SHI has planted more than 2.6 million trees and converted thousands of acres to sustainable uses; thereby saving tens of thousands of acres of tropical forest from slash-and-burn destruction.

SHI works with families and students throughout Honduras, Panama, Belize and Nicaragua implementing alternatives to slash-and-burn farming, the leading cause of rainforest destruction in the region. “