If I was allowed to pick only one thing that was the absolute best thing about the Flower Tree it would have to be the women that I am surrounded with on a daily basis. I am one of the lucky ones, I get up each and every day and look forward to where I will be that day. But since we opened the Red Zinnia, here is how my day starts. I lay in bed looking out the window at the trees and say to myself "ok, today is .........and I am at ......(insert Flower Tree or Red Zinnia here) and I get to play with"................but with most of us now being split between the two stores, it also means that you don't get to "play" with everyone very often.

So this year, we decided to do something a little different to do our planning session for the upcoming Spring season at both stores. Thankfully we have a few months under our belt now at Red Zinnia, and things are going wonderful. We have a handle on the ordering, the wine room is running as smooth as a great Cabernet Franc, and we are blessed to have wonderful people coming in every day. And the reason this is SO GREAT is that spring is coming, and the Flower Tree will soon be consuming us... in a great way of course, but consuming none the less. Back to the planning session. I did some research into taking all of us (9) to the trade show in San Francisco, but costs what they are, I started looking at some alternatives and that is when I remembered an absolutely lovely Bed & Breakfast that I had stayed at in Genoa a few years ago. I reached the owner of this beautiful home, The Wild Rose Inn http://www.wildrose-inn.com/ , and thankfully for us she had the dates available that we needed. We rented the entire house for three days and we were joined by my buddy Melissa from Every Bloomin' Thing in Susanville, and her mom Linda.

I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story..........

Who would not stop at this sign????..........as you can tell, it was a windy day, but the truck makes great u-turns, and our caravan arrived at our first stop of the day. A little junk/thrift/antique store in the middle of absolutely nowhere, outside Dayton, Nv. We picked up a chrome wine rack for RedZin, and a couple of glasses for our wine later that night. On a trip many years ago we started the habit of looking for weird/unusual/funny/classic glasses to have while on our trip.

The front of a great Basque sheephearders wagon outside Carson City

One of our "finds" of the day. Michelle collects these wonderful old framed poems. They are usually from the 1920's, and we always feel lucky when we find one about freindship, or trees! We gave it to her as a little surprise on our last day in Genoa.

Melissa finds the 1st!! perfect display table for an area she is creating in her store. (I think she headed home with at least 3)

My notes from the Tahoe Ridge Wine Tasting Room. Located in Genoa, we had a fabulouse time with the owner Kathy, and she has agreed to come out for an event at Red Zinnia in April.

The gang at the tasting room.

Statue of Snowshoe Thompson, local hero of Genoa

Moon on the way back to Wild Rose that evening after the tasting. Absolutely breathtaking.

Part 2, tomorrow. On to Gardnerville/Minden and return.