Shop ’til there’s phlox
March 27th, 2008
If shopping were competitive, I would qualify for any contest.
How can I shop competitively if I live in Woodstock, Virginia, at least 45 minutes either way from “shopping centers” and an hour and a half from “the city” (our term for anything past Manassas).
My definition of shopping may be slightly more eclectic than shoes and skirts (though I shop for them as well). Shopping, to me, means searching for exactly the right thing.
Recently at work I was given a laptop computer so that I could work away from work whenever necessary. They gave me a big blue backpack for carrying the laptop – both as protection and as a way of disguising the fact I am carrying a laptop.
I tried it for a few weeks and I must say I just felt dumb carrying a backpack around.
Now, I am not a fussy woman. Or a girlie, girl. I just think once you are past 35, your backpack days should be limited to actual hiking. But that’s me.
So, I began shopping for the perfect laptop computer bag. On the Internet.
I love Internet shopping. I have high speed broadband and I can zip from web site to web site quicker than you can say Google.
I typed in “classy laptop case” and I had hundreds of choices. I ended up going with a low-priced fake leather case on Amazon.com which offered free shipping that day.
Shopping does not always mean putting on shoes.
I have always found retail therapy a soothing way to attack stress. The trick is to stop before the shopping itself adds to the stress. I have ended up with a few items that – after the shopping fog cleared – I truly did not need.
Living in the Valley does not mean you have to shop on the Internet. That’s just one option. Let me share with you one of my favorite shopping haunts in Shenandoah County.
Fort Valley Nursery and Garden Center.
Recently moved to a new location near Lowe’s in Woodstock, Fort Valley has an amazing new space full of fun ideas for outdoor living. They believe that you should enjoy living outside your home too which means everything from finding the perfect shrub to picking out a great chair or chiminea.
The people at Fort Valley are the best. They take the time to discuss any purchase, no matter how big or small. They are full-service landscapers, but they also have pots of sweet-faced pansies that would fit on an apartment stoop as well as a flower bed.
My favorite Fort Valley purchase is probably my sun topiary behind my house. It is seven feet tall and is a blue juniper shaped like the sun.
I had been looking for the perfect thing to put in a section of our property that we had dug up and replaced with landscape rocks. The rocks looked better than the spotty grass, but it was quite barren.
Each week I put something different in the middle of the rocks. A bench. A big clay pot. A smaller clay pot on top of the bench. Nothing looked right.
Then, one Saturday morning, I stopped by the old Fort Valley location and took a walk around the beautiful plants, shrubs and flowering trees.
And there it was. The sun. It was beautiful and I could immediately picture what it would look like behind my house.
The Fort Valley guys delivered it one morning when I was at work and when I came down the driveway at lunchtime (I always go home at lunch to let the dogs out) there was my topiary – perfectly placed. Our barren spot was barren no more.
The satisfaction of finding just the perfect item after exhaustive shopping makes the purchase especially sweet. That is the special satisfaction of shopping that my husband just doesn’t get. But that’s OK. I don’t get the whole sitting outside at 6 a.m. on a November morning dressed like a giant tree limb with a patch of blaze orange.
Other favorite Fort Valley purchases were my red twig dogwood which served as our Christmas tree two years ago (that’s another story) and the limelight hydrangea out front.
Fort Valley Nursery crossed my lips this evening as I told my husband of some phlox I spotted when I was in there buying the perfect housewarming gift last week.
I will look around to make sure I have found the perfect flowering plant, but you can bet I will shop ’til there’s phlox.