clerking again...

For the third year in a row I clerked at the LIDS annual flower show. Two years ago I wrote about my first experience.

Mostly more of the same, though this year I had a couple of realizations...

I wasn't really planning on entering anything, but I was open to the idea. In the morning I was out in the yard to see if anything I had seemed worthy of entry. But nothing passed muster. I was all over, thinking "that one has a crease, that one has uneven color, that one's not symmetric. So I didn't enter anything. But during the judging I was mentally checking out all these flowers and realizing that some of the flowers I had passed up could have stood proudly. I wouldn't have won best in show or anything like that. But I would probably have ribboned with some of my flowers if I had entered them.

Maybe next year. Well, no not next year. Next year LIDS is hosting the regional meeting so we won't do a show. Maybe in two years.

The other realization isn't so much a realization as an observation. The rules for judging are clear about scapes with more than one bloom. The judges are to grade based on the worst bloom on the scape. Given that, I have trouble wrapping my head around the fact that people enter scapes with multiple flowers. In theory, there's no potential loss from removing a bloom. If the bloom you remove is the worst on the scape, then your score will be higher. If you remove a bloom other than the worst, your score won't go down. It's Operations Research 101. That said, I can think of a few reasons to keep multiple blooms on a scape:

• For whatever reason, you think that the extra bloom(s) improve(s) the aesthetic appeal of the entry, and that will sway the judges who are, afterall only human.
• If two entries are tied for best in show, the judges can use number of blooms as a tiebreaker. But seriously...For that to work you have to have a scape with multiple blooms where they all score exactly the same. Then you have to tie another scape. How likely is that?
• Your as rational as pi.

So...uh...what was my point?

Oh yeah. If I enter the contest in a couple years, I'll be sure not to enter any scapes with multiple blooms.