Luther Burbank Home and Gardens opens doors to moms Sunday

There will be free carnations for moms at the Mother's Day plant sale and open house at Luther Burbank Home & Gardens on Sunday in downtown Santa Rosa.

Volunteers at the living historical landmark at Sonoma and Santa Rosa avenues, across from Santa Rosa City Hall, also will offer free sunflower seeds to kids, tours of the Burbank home and an opportunity for Mom's Day visitors to sit for a spell and paint clay pots.

And Sebastopol's Apple Tree Morris troupe will perform a seasonal dance that dates back centuries to the farming communities of the Cotswold Hills in Southern England.

Sunday's Chosen Spot Plant Expo and Sale is from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Admission is $2 for adults, free for kids younger than 12.

Kids of all ages might well be interested in a 1 p.m. book-signing by Michele Krueger, who dug deeply into the story of the world-acclaimed horticulturist who lived and worked in Sonoma County for many years prior to his death in Santa Rosa in 1926.

Krueger wrote, 'Luther Burbank: The Man Who Scattered Pollen Underneath the Sun,' a book of poems. One, 'It Took 20 Years,' goes like this:

Luther Burbank made a practice

of breeding desert cactus

minus its spines.

A simile:

Think plucked porcupines.