They warned us. We had heard that the semi-annual bamboo sale at Quail Botanical Gardens was a mad house with people trampling their friends and tripping their neighbors to get their hands on some rare or well-priced bamboo. We had no idea. It lived up to all the hype! Team Kathy (consisting of my parents and me, Grandma Salm for moral support, and Todd with financial backing) sized up the plants and the competition and emerged victorious with seven specimens, including two that were much-sought-after.

We arrived at 8:50AM to begin checking out the bamboo that was for sale. My mom was the leader of Team Kathy. Her job was to figure out which plants she wanted and to give us assignments for which plants each of us should try to get once the scramble started. All of the plants were labeled, some better than others, so it was critical for us to know exactly where our target plants were located.

At about 9:00 it started to hail! It doesn't hail too often here. When the hail subsided, we were left with drizzly weather. It would take more than that to shoo away Team Kathy! My dad and I made many scouting trips up and down the aisles of bamboo plants. At about 9:30AM, we decided to take a break and sat in the car, studying the incomparable Western Garden Book, which had pretty good descriptions of many of the plants that they had for sale.

As it got later, more people began to arrive. The bamboo auction (for rare bamboos) began at 10:30AM. The "scramble/riot" was not supposed to begin until 11AM, but right after the auction, people were already lining up at the starting line! So the nice man at Quail Gardens (in the reddish jacket, head down) started the countdown fifteen minutes early.

The next few minutes were a bit hazy. A mad dash began on the route to the coveted blue bamboo, H. hookerianus. A woman fell flat on her face, but my dad was on a mission. He valiantly grabbed a little blue bamboo plant on his way to claiming a beautiful black bamboo plant, P. nigra. Stephanie madly grabbed a nice H. falconeri specimen and scrambled for the last coveted F. murielae. Meanwhile, mom grabbed an Alphonse-Karr, a C. coronalis, and a C. pittierii. All told, we had scrambed for seven plants! It would have been eight, but mom and dad told Stephanie she had to put back the plant that would have grown to fifty feet. :-( Then we had to wait in line while everyone paid for their bamboo at the little stand with the colorful umbrella. Our consolation for our long wait in line was that there were plenty of people behind us!

As we loaded the plants into mom's car and dad's station wagon, we made notes for future bamboo sales. In the future, we know that some of the plants go faster than others. For example, there was no need for Dad to scramble for the black bamboo, as there was still some left over when the rioting had subsided. Likewise with Steph's dash for the H. falconeri. Steph also noted later that the 50ft plant she had wanted to get was noted in the Western Garden book as "rare," so that probably would have been a cool one to grab. Oh well. At least we can go again in October. :-)

Our spoils:

Original photo	2 years later
H. hookerianus (blue bamboo)	blue bamboo
P. nigra (black bamboo)	black bamboo
H. falconeri	falconeri
F. murielae	murielae
C. pittierii	pittierii
Alphonse-Karr	Alphonse-Karr
C. coronalis	coronalis