Friday Night in Luanda - Act 1 - Plant Purchasing

We are going to need to learn how to more conservatively book our calendar. Last night we ended up with four different engagements around the city, and by midnight we had only accomplished three of them. Since we both turn into pumpkins at that time, and since Emiquilson was also quite exhausted (he had been on shift since 1:00 pm) it was time to migrate towards home.

The evening started with a visit to a house in Miramar - a part of the city up on the hill by the embassies - we call one part of it Embassy Row - the French, US, Nigerian, Belgian, and South African embassies are all within maybe a few houses of each other. One of our co-workers who lives in the city is moving on to a new job in another country, so his lovely wife (she really is awesome) is coordinating with her gardener to sell her plants in the yard that they have been working on for several years - Martins, the gardener will be able to sell the plants for charity, Catherine shares her gorgeous garden with the rest of us, Paul and I get some beautiful, mature plants in very nice (and virtually impossible to find) pots, and we all come out winners.

We left after some light negotiating (volume discount) with a new front entry way's worth of plants. The pictures below don't really do the plants justice, but it's a start - once we have full internet running, I'll be using a better camera than my iPad. The pots are lovely, and they have traveled from Australia, to Nigeria, to Angola, and now they are making their way to Casa de Littlefield. The pictures don't show the Piece de Resistance, since we didn't quite have room for it in the car with the other parts of the team - it is a 4.5 foot high jungle plant with leaves the size of small children (I could see an Ann Geddes or Lindsay Faber picture with a newborn cradled in the foliage of this puppy - with plenty of room to spare).

We will be going back for Big Blue on Monday after our appointments at the US Embassy to get color copies of our passports notarized so that we don't have to lug around the real things! At that point, I will have to update my plant vocabulary so that I give each species the courtesy of calling them by their names instead of "the spikey one" or "the little spidery one." That doesn't quite cut it.

Our next stop was the First Friday with the Luanda British Women's Club at Club Navale. Act 2... coming up next.