WWU - We Run For Plants!

I know it might seem like all my fellow Renegades do is run and eat, but we actually have other interests, and one of them is gardening, so when we heard about the annual plant sale put on by the horticulture club at Texas A&M University, we decided to meet on campus for our run and then hit up the plant sale right afterward.  We'd heard that this is a very popular event and sells out early; not wanting to take any chances on missing out, we started our run at 6:30 am so we could be finished and ready to shop right when it started at 8:00 am.

I'm usually the person who maps out our routes for the group, but this one was difficult for me because I get lost once I'm on campus, so I tried to do a mostly-perimeter route.  Even so, Jeff was looking at it the night before, asking me if one section ran by the Bell Tower.  My blank look told him everything - seriously, that place just confuses the heck out of me!  As it turned out, we all left in small groups; Julia, Diane, and I ended up running a straight shot down the road bordering the school, turned around and ran back to the parking lot for a total of 3.5 miles.  Others ran anywhere from 4ish to 5.5 miles, and those who went a different route came across a potentially alarming scene of an abandoned bicycle, hat, headphones, and phone at one point...maybe someone was attacked, or was hit by a car and thrown off their bike, or perhaps it was an intoxicated student who got confused and left everything behind?  Hopefully it wasn't anything too horrible, but in any case, this was reported to the police department.

It was a foggy morning, as you can see...

We headed over to the plant sale, which was held on the lawn near the greenhouses on campus, and realized that it was in full swing - apparently it's more like a garage sale when it comes to starting time, and while the official time was 8:00 am, people were there and shopping at 7:30 am.  Good to know for next year!

 

It was being cleaned out pretty quickly, so we scattered to make our choices.

They had both bluebonnets (the state flower) and maroon bluebonnets (very popular with the Aggies here - it's A&M's school color) - I didn't want to buy any, but thought this person's gathering of them looked pretty.  They watched me as I took the picture, I'm sure wondering if I was going to make off with any of their treasures!

Cary had a wagon, thankfully - this is a combination of what she picked out and what we picked out.  I'll have pictures of everything that we got, planted in their new pots, soon. 

You can see the line to pay in the background - it was long, but students were tallying up each person's order while they were in line so all we had to do was pay when we reached the front, and it went pretty quickly.

This was fun - Diane found a Chinese Fringe Flower tree that she'd been wanting for several years now so she was thrilled (and managed to fit it inside of her Prius, which was quite the feat!), and we all were happy with our new plant treasures.  Then we were off to breakfast:

Jeff and I split this.  The Everything bagel was exceptionally good this morning, and were able to give our compliments to the baker, who was still there (he starts baking at 1:00 am).

After we had our fill of the bonus fudge brownies, coffee, and conversation, Jeff and I zipped on over to our local grocery store (HEB) to buy pots for the plants.  I swear, they have the best deals on glazed ceramic pots in town...normally large pots cost around $40, but they are $17 at the grocery store.  It's funny to think that we started out our Saturday with a 5:00 am alarm, got in a nice run with friends, shopped for plants, had breakfast, then shopped for pots, and were home before 11:00 am - a full day, and we still had most of the day remaining!