I needed specimen rocks for a design so that was a good excuse to go to Country Nursery in Burtonsville

There are a number of businesses that carry quantities of flagstones, wallstones, and palletized boulders; in the Washington area there's only one place, I know of,  that still lets you select individual stones and buy them by the pound. Country Nursery in Burtonsville is one of those old fashioned nurseries that retails plants, has a florist shop, designs and installs gardens, and sells firewood.

Their rocks are the best. They have some real curiosities like the orange gypsum with large inclusions of mica (second picture). I didn't get a good picture of the green serpentine but they had one piece 6 x 3 x 2 feet! I like rocks anyway so of course I have dozens of theirs. My sons gave me three nice ones for Christmas!

I love digging around in these older nurseries. They often have, as CN does, a smallish greenhouse attached to the hardgood/checkout area. They're always packed with odds and ends of interesting plants. I found this spectacular Vriesea; The bracts are...well, you can see the color, and it'd just started flowering so I expect a few months out of it. Like all bromeliads, the mother plant dies when the flowering stalk is finished. Some time before this, small pups appear around the base and these can be separated from the mother and planted. This genus is one that it is possible to flower in a sunny window.