i was a middle-aged flower show clerk

Entries waiting to be checked in and placed

I'm a bit late on this, but last Sunday was the Long Island Daylily Society's annual flower show. This was my second year of helping out with the show. And it was an exhausting weekend. More details about my involvement will come later, but first I'd like to provide a bit of background.

The main part of the flower show consists of judging flowers (duh). These are single daylily (possibly with some buds, possibly not) blooms on scapes. They are judged and awarded ribbons (or not). Then "Best in show" is selected from among the best. There are other competitions -- for best floral arrangement, best place setting, best flower off-scape. After the judging, the public is allowed in to walk around and ooh and ahh over the pretty flowers. There are also various displays -- photos of daylilies, descriptions of daylilies and how plant them. And, of course, the big moneymaker -- a flower sale.

Same as last year, I signed up to be a clerk."Clerk," in this context, means "assistant to the judges."
The judges are grouped into teams of three, and each team has to judge a specific subset of the flowers. The teams are each assisted by two clerks. The judges are looking over each flower, considering a host of factors including:

• how well-groomed the scape is
• how well-formed the flower is
• whether the flower has tears or blemishes
• whether the flower appears to be of the proper size and form for its category
• whether a bid is pushing against the flower



No one entered Spider Man, but it's my favorite daylily, so here's a picture.

I assume that, in theory, the judges are supposed to consider how closely the flower matches the cultivar's official description. To illustrate, let's consider my favorite cultivar, Spider Man. Spider Man's color is described as "bright red self with chartreuse throat." If an entry is labelled as Spider Man, but is, say, solid red, then I believe it should lose points. Note, that I haven't had that confirmed. But with something like 40,000 cultivars, it's kind of hard for the judges to know e very one that they're likely to see. I suppose, in theory, they can look up the descriptions. But with a few hundred entries to judge, time doesn't really permit. The way things worked, I suspect that one could find some random daylily in the yard, groom it, name it "Cantor's Diagonal Argument"and enter it. No one would be the wiser. I can only assume that such shenanigans are not ocurring. But I can't say for sure.

As a clerk, my job was to follow my team of judges, not talk (unless the judges asked me a question), follow their instructions ("Marc, please rotate that one so we can see the other side" "Marc could you move that forward" "Marc, go check that this is enterred in the right category? It looks too big"), and mark the tags as appropriate after the flowers are judged. The absolute best flowers, get purple ribbons and the chance to be considered for Best in Show. Those not quite that good get blue ribbons. Then red. Then yellow. My co-clerk put the ribbons on the tags while I used a hole puncher to indicate what type of ribbon was won. Those with purple ribbons also got a numerical grade (from 95 to 100) written down to help with the final judging. Those deemed unworthy of even a yellow ribbon are simply declared to be "judged," and I had to write "judged" on their tags. I presume that's to make it clear that they were in fact judged, and the absence of a ribbon doesn't mean that they were overlooked.

The Turkiews with their winnings

I assume the reason the clerks have to maintain silence -- aside from not annoying the judges -- is that a clerk can have entries in the show (I didn't), and it's important to be sure that the clerks don't say anything prejudicial. In fact, my co-clerk had a bunch of entries in there. At one point, when the judges were discussing a flower -- Jackie Canner -- that I knew was one of hers (because I had seen her son grooming it), I was amused to watch as she tried to maintain her poker face. It was even more interesting as one of the judges started commenting about how beautiful the cultivar is, and she has to find out who entered it so she can ask about buying a plant or two of that variety.

Before the show, Blair and I had agreed to come early to help with placement -- putting the flowers on the table arranged by category and cultivar. This was a tedious process because each entry had to be looked up to determine category. Blair hadn't signed up for any specific task, as she prefers to show up and be put to use wherever she is needed. In the event, she spent most of the time outside helping withe the plant sale. This proved invaluable. The plants being sold were daylilies dug up from members' gardens and potted. Each had the cultivar indicated, but they weren't in bloom, so potential buyers couldn't tell what they were in for. Enter Blair with her phone. She spent a whole lot of time looking up cultivars and showing customers the pictures.

Best in Show: King Kahuna

In the end, Best in Show was won by King Kahuna, which was entered by the Turkiew family (father David, mother Rachel and son  Elliot). Rachel had been my co-clerk. It should be stressed that "Best in Show" does not mean prettiest. It basically means the flower that lost the fewest points for flaws. The Turkiews also won three other competitions. I suppose, entering more than 50 flowers helped their odds.

I did learn a couple things that may come in handy in the future. First of all, if you're clerking, don;t wear long sleeves. I purposely dressed reasonably nicely. Not a tux, mind you, but clean jeans and a long-sleeved sport shirt. But the sleeves make my arms wider, which makes it harder to carry out the judges' instructions without touching any of the flowers. Touching the flowers is a major faux-pas. The other thing is, when entering a daylily show, don't enter a scape with multiple flowers. Two really pretty flowers may look better on the scape than one. But you will be judged by the worst flower on the scape. So removing a flower can help you do better, and won't make you do worse.

Finally, when you order a cake for a daylily show, make sure they spell the message correctly.

Can you spot the typo?