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I've worn myself ragged! I've been out gift shopping for you. Well, not for you, exactly, but I've been looking for last-minute gifts that you can give.
By this time your holiday panic is in high gear, and you need just about anything to stuff the stocking. I know you want to give cool stuff, but you don't have time to run hither and yon to find it. My holiday gift guide should save you time and also money, because everything is less than $20.
I've scoured the local specialty shops to find the best and brightest of the season for unusual garden-inspired gifts for just about anybody. The shops on my list are well away from the mall, give you personal service and have distinctive items you won't find just anywhere.
Budget plants
The Urban Gardener (805 N.W. 23rd Ave.) has the most adorable little blooming Christmas cactuses and poinsettias. Each is less than $5 and comes in a tiny pot small enough to fit into a votive candleholder. These itty-bitty plants still have full-size flowers.
When you want to pick up a little something, this is an easy "get" for hostess gifts or to give friends at work. It's small but so adorable and offbeat, they'll love you.
Smith and Hawken (30 N.W. 23rd Ave.) has "Simplicity" paperwhites in a pot for $18. Here you get three paperwhite bulbs already planted with soil and moss. All you do is add water. Voil?!
Smith and Hawken also has some neat compact bypass pruners for $14. The pruners are small enough to fit in your pocket or purse, but they'll cut a branch almost an inch thick. The blade is high carbon steel, yet the whole thing weighs less then 5 ounces.
Frost-free garden art
My hands-down favorite garden art can be used inside or out: colored translucent hand-blown glass spheres in blue, orange, purple or yellow. The 5-inch-diameter rounds look great on a shelf inside or grouped together outside. Hollyhocks Garden Essentials (2707 S.E. Belmont St.) sells the glass globes for $16.
While you're there, take a look at the whimsical Poinsettia Fairies for $19.50. With their garishly long legs and poinsettia flowers around their faces, these free-standing fairies look like someone from Cirque du Soleil dreamed them up. I also saw the Poinsettia Fairies at Stars Antique Mall (7027 S.E. Milwaukie Ave.).
A clean getaway
Soap is soap is soap. Except when somebody comes up with a distinctive way to make it fun to wash your hands.
Dig garden store (425 N.W. 11th Ave.) has this neat 9-inch-long soap log for $16. It's a perfect gift for just about anyone, gardener or not. The soap log looks like a baguette of bread or a long roll of ice cream cake. But it's made with an exfoliant melted inside, such as poppy seed, lavender or cornmeal, to scour your hands clean. Here's the neat part: You slice off half-inch circles of soap from the log with a butter knife.
Help for hands
My favorite cream for nasty garden hands is called Hand Therapy, made by Crabtree and Evelyn. But the tubes were always so darn big, the cream would outlive you.
Now it comes in a really cute little tube (1.7 fluid ounces), small enough for your purse or pocket, for $6.50. You can find it at the chain's area stores and the Jealous Gardener (7011 S.E. Milwaukie Ave.).
The trick to using this cream? As you rub it on your hands, push a dollop down under your cuticles and leave it there as you busy yourself. Your hands will suck it up fast. (That's how I keep my cuticles from cracking and bleeding.)
I hope this helps your holiday hunt. At the very least, you'll find yourself in the right places to pick out something unique, organic and garden inspired.
And if all else fails you can always let me take the blame, saying, "Anne Jaeger, the garden gal, told me you'd love it!"
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