Dodging Showers on a Soggy Saturday

This morning we headed northeast of Seattle to Monroe, to check out the Monroe Antique Show and Sale at the fairgrounds.

What a treat it is to see the hills greening up again.  I love that new green color!  It was partly cloudy, partly sunny, enough to light up the green and make it glow.

This was a new antique show for us, and we were interested to see what we would find.

 I took a few photos before I began my serious shopping.

We really liked the show and spent more than two hours there, looking at everything, and buying a few things too.

 We bought this little Craftsman style shelf for the Whidbey cabin.

 The blue glass violin bottle has sentimental value. My Aunt Alma always had hers hanging somewhere in her kitchen, in all four of the houses where she lived.  She is now in a memory care facility in Oregon.  I will not see her much now that my mother is gone.  They were sisters living in the same town.  My violin bottle will always remind me of her.

And this 1930s McCoy vase will remind me that sometimes I am just extravagant.  Hopefully not too often.  But it is a wonderful addition to my collection.  And I really do need to stop adding to that collection.   

Tom added to one of his collections too, but I forgot to take a photo of his new old watering can.

After lunch at a nearby Subway, we headed back south and stopped in Woodinville at Molbak's Nursery.

It was pouring down rain when we arrived, so we ran inside.

 It is a wonderful place full of beauty.

But then this happened!

Of course, we went outside.

We loved looking at everything, bought two plants, and were on our way again.

The sky looked pretty threatening when we got to the Bellevue Botanical Garden, but we put on our rain jackets and took a chance. There was a "vintage" sale in this building that we wanted to check out, but it turned out to be just garage sale stuff, we we went on to the garden, since the weather was holding.

 The main border has been recently redone, and is still filling in, but bulbs are blooming and lovely little things are popping up through the soil.

 Families were out strolling in the garden.

 And the native woods were glowing green.

 In the Yao Garden

 Color is subtle here in early spring, but oh, so beautiful.

 And then we raced back to the car, which was parked next to this lovely cherry tree, just beating the downpour as the next squall hit.

There will be more rain tomorrow, but we'll be content to wait it out at home for a while now.  We had a great day out and about.