The morning line was a bit slower than usual to build up, on account of the rain. But by opening there were over a thousand hardy souls outside with umbrellas and carts of all types.

It rained steadily throughout the day, to everyone’s misery. (The plants that are outside were happy, though.)

As usually happens, about an hour to an hour and a half after opening, many of the people who came in at the same time at the opening started to check out and the checkout line built up. We apologize to EVERYONE at the sale at that time, because we (for the first time since we moved to Grandstand five years ago) lost control of the waiting line, which snakes around the building.

We know that many folks had to wait what we consider a very unreasonable time to reach the checkouts. (We normally can honestly say the wait at busy times is between 10 and 20 minutes max, but this was clearly not the case for about an hour yesterday.)

We have already addressed the issue for Saturday and Sunday this year, and will (as soon as the sale is over) discuss better systems for it in 2011.

By 3:00 p.m., however, things in the sale were busy but pleasant and the wait was down to no more than five minutes.

P.S. The Plant Sale (and I) were on KSTP Channel 5 news last night. They had some nice footage of what the sale looks like! I’m trying to see if I can get it made into a YouTube video to post to our website.